Greig was the most famous of Norwegian composers, having been known in his own time throughout Europe and most of the world for his piano compositions and orchestral music. Greig grew up in Norway as the son of the English consul, studied music in the great Conservatory at Leipzig, and toured Europe extensively throughout his career as a composer, conductor, and pianist.

Henrik Ibsen himself offered Greig a contract to write the music to go along with his new play Peer Gynt. The play opened in 1876 and was successful enough to be performed 36 times that year.

Much of the music from Peer Gynt is still known to the casual listener today, as well as Greig's piano concerto and some of his Norwegian songs.

This piece, the fourth movement of Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, is well recognized with its accessible melody and simple structure. It is one of the few pieces of "classical" music literature that begins slowly and accelerates throughout, maintaining the same melody with increasingly wild accompaniment until it reaches an almost breathless dramatic ending.

MP3 sound sample: entire piece (synthesizer/midi).



IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING by Edvard Grieg, arranged by Tom Kirkland for brass quintet consisting of two trumpets, F horn, trombone, and tuba, comes in a pdf file of 450K, with a seven-page score, five two-page parts, and a license page, eighteen pages in all. Performance time should be about 3:15.