The innovation, imagination and shocking effects of Edvard Grieg's musical response to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt never cease to amaze many people. The music casts a subtle and many-sided spell together with the text. But we hear the music through many historical filters which threaten to rob it of the power it had and can have. It is generally considered to be one of the foremost expressions of 'Norwegian national identity', and is thus often understood one-dimensionally. By no means is it self-evident that we as listeners today are open to the many different meanings of this music's radical tonal effects. The music is greatly loved by many, but is also seen as a Romanticization of Ibsen's sometimes blunt text.

The Suites live separate lives from the play, connected only indirectly to the text and the stage - through Grieg's original inspiration, and through listeners who know the Ibsen. But Grieg said: 'If you could attend a production of the play, you would see that my musical intentions become clear only in the context of the stage.'

Peer Gynt (1867) is Ibsen's second 'dramatic poem', following Brand (1866). In the summer of 1862 Ibsen had made a trip to Gudbrandsdal, one of the valleys of central Norway, north of Oslo, and his studies there meant he was able to give Peer Gynt a genuine historical basis. But Ibsen's highly individual mythical world goes far beyond actual folklore. He also made critical and ironic comments about narrow nationalism. Throughout, his epic poem is a dramatic dialogue with multifarious implications. The literary historian Edvard Beyer (1920-2003) says it is both 'fairytale and picture of folk-life; tragedy and fantastical, satirical, Aristophanic comedy; dream play and morality'. Its portrayals of erotic yearning have features in common with earlier European Romanticism. Biting intellectual irony, humour and wit mingle with poetic and compassionate insight. Peer Gynt leaves his loved ones in the lurch, like a modern-day chameleon, without scruples. Grieg saw in this a philosophical critique of contemporary ethics: 'the performance of Peer Gynt can do some good just now in Kristiania [ Oslo ], where materialism is on the up and is trying to choke everything we find best and most sacred; what we need, is a mirror in which all this egotism can be seen, and Peer Gynt is just such a mirror.' Through satire, the play shows up our (self-) destructive side and the falsehoods within us. But it has a serious and constructive message too, which Grieg played his part in developing and expressing.

It was Ibsen's own initiative to ask Grieg to write the music - in a long and detailed letter in 1874. Grieg said 'yes please', but was somewhat ambivalent about the work. He called it 'the most unmusical of all subjects', 'terrifyingly intractable'. 'The text is such that you really have to kill all thoughts of writing true music, and concentrate merely on the external effect.'

Theatre music can tend towards anonymity or towards independence. Grieg's Peer Gynt music is sometimes suitably anonymous, sometimes fascinatingly independent. It responds to many layers in the play, forming a musical counterpart to the text, rather than imposing a particular interpretation upon it. Together, text and music create a 'musical drama', each helping the other to win popular success. As a written verse-play, the text was at first unsuccessful with the reading public, but Norway had no 'national opera', so this quickly became the 'Norwegian National Drama'. As time went on, Peer Gynt stagings became almost 'national gala evenings', generally featuring new theatrical techniques, colourful folkloric costumes and large numbers of performers. The true nature of the text was buried, and Peer Gynt was turned into - as the great Norwegian writer Arne Garborg warned it would be - a 'costume drama'.

Before the Second World War, the music was highly praised, and was an important part of the play's attraction, but since then voices have been raised claiming that the music practically paralyses our imagination. The mid-twentieth-century critic Hans Heiberg felt that Peer Gynt had become an 'idyllic festival play', and that the music is 'sugary', while 'Ibsen's text is bitter'. Bland performances, and the fact that audiences had become less easy to shock, may have muted the effect of the satire and irony that is certainly present in Grieg's music. Attitudes towards incidental music in general had also changed.

At first, Grieg undervalued his Peer Gynt music, as he later did with the Holberg Suite. Both were created in circumstances he had not chosen for himself, so he felt that the musical results could not be any good! He did not dare show up at the première of Peer Gynt in 1876. It was a huge success, and he gradually came to recognize the power of the music. The Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 was finished on 18 January 1888, and immediately triumphed in the concert hall. Grieg's selection of music for the first Suite seems to have been a deliberate attempt to bring together the 'best' and most popular numbers, building to a climax In the Hall of the Mountain King. Grieg also made a piano arrangement of this piece.

Morning (or Morning Mood) comes from the fourth act, and there has been much debate about whether this music fits with the relatively grotesque scenes in the Sahara. It uses the pentatonic scale, perhaps suggesting Arabian connections. Or is this Norwegian pentatonicism with its roots in the second act and the mountains of Dovre? Thematically there is a close kinship here with the music of Peer Gynt and the Woman in Green. Morning Mood is a nature-idyll in E major, with (Grieg said) 'the sun breaking through the clouds at the first forte'. This produces an unusual musical form: the climax comes early on, and the day then settles down to rest. Towards the end we hear imitations of birdsong. The incessant flowing figures suggest associations with waves on the seashore, or with wind. Or they could be sounds in Peer Gynt's head. Grieg asked that the piece 'be treated as pure music', and as such it has a unique place in the drama.

The second movement, The Death of åse, is heard in the theatre as a soft, distant echo, possibly from behind the scenes, during Peer Gynt's fantasy-monologue to his mother åse. He imagines himself carrying her away in a horse-drawn sleigh to St Peter, and at first he is unaware that she has died. Peer's 'artistic' flight of fantasy is contrasted with the grave reality of death. In this way, music and text work powerfully together and against each other. The music is like a chorale or a funeral march that rises and falls, in a dark B minor, maybe connected both with åse's suffering and with Peer's own tragedy. In the Suite we hear this music differently, without the dramatic irony of its juxtaposition with the stage picture. It becomes more about our feelings - in which case it can be natural for the performance to be more expressive.

The elegant, exotic and sensual mazurka Anitra's Dance was also written as background music, for speech and dance, using similarly gentle string sounds (here with triangle). Grieg called it 'a little darling', saying the music should sound 'completely ppp': possibly performed by a group of soloists and/or offstage. It should work both with and against what we see and hear in the theatre: the Bedouin chieftain's rather grimy daughter Anitra belly-dancing, and Peer, extremely attracted, allured, seduced until he barely hears the music any more. Again, in the Suite these contrasts and parallels with the visual action disappear. Sly, seductive Anitra works her power on us directly, in musical attire - though she probably seems a bit cleaner than the text suggests! Melodically the dance is related to both In the Hall of the Mountain King and Solveig's Song. The pause on the opening chord, redolent of sun and sand, is typical of many kinds of dance music, as the instruments strike up.

In 1876, the barbaric In the Hall of the Mountain King was, modernistic and innovative. The curtain is down when the music starts, so our imagination can get to work before we emerge into the netherworld landscape and its swarming trolls. The theatre version includes a part for troll chorus as they chase and menace Peer Gynt ever more wildly, until the Mountain King himself has to bellow 'Isvann I blodet!' - 'Cool it!' (literally 'Ice water in the blood!'). The simple musical form, a long build-up to a climax, is found in later pieces like Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Honegger's Pacific 231, Ravel's Bolero, Harald Sæverud's Kjempeviseslåtten (known in English as The Ballad of Revolt, Naxos 8.557018) and Geirr Tveitt's Haring-øl. The crescendos in such works are of various kinds: magical, mechanical, erotic or tragic. In Grieg it is not easy to decide the relative degrees of humour and seriousness. Norwegian children sing rude songs to this tune! Does the music portray our selfishness and malevolence, or is it merely comic and harmless? Destructive forces are hard to define, and can even be very fascinating. In the Hall of the Mountain King is often played as an orchestral showpiece, which pretty much guarantees smiles and applause. Grieg wrote that, after a performance in London, the audience bellowed their enthusiasm like wild beasts. In his day the music also aroused anger and was seen as shocking. The musical element in the trolls' realm was 'pure parody', Grieg said - 'so I came up with something for the Mountain King's hall that I literally can't bear to listen to: it reeks of cow pies, exaggerated Norwegian provincialism and trollish selfishness!' After all the music is over, Peer says: 'Both the dancing and the playing - may the cat claw my tongue - were utterly delightful.'

Writer: Bjarte Engeset Siegert
Translated by: David Gallagher