Descriptive Analyses of Piano Works — Grieg

Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite, Op.

46 Grieg is the chief living exponent of Norwegian music, as Ibsen is of its literature.

“Peer Gynt” is a versified drama by Henrik Ibsen, to which Grieg has written an orchestral suite of that name, from which arrangements for piano have been transcribed, both for two and four hands.

The scenes, incidents, moods, and characters of Ibsen’s drama are essentially Scandinavian; wild, gloomy, fantastic, often vague and incoherent to the reader of more classic and polished literature.

Peer Gynt, the hero, is a lawless adventurer, of wild and uncouth personality, undisciplined instincts and passions, and most chaotic career.

The various parts of the Grieg suite are founded upon various scenes of the drama, but the numbering of the different movements will mislead the player, as the chronological progression of the drama is not always adhered to in the music.

The following is the order in which the numbers should be presented to fit the scenes which they represent in the life and adventures of Peer Gynt: (1) Peer Gynt and Ingrid; (2) Troll Dance;

(3) Death of Ase; (4) Arabian Dance; (5) Anitra’s Dance; (6) Solveig’s Song; (7) Morning; (8) Storm; (9) Cradle Song.

I have included in their proper places two of the songs of Solveig, the principal heroine of the drama, which Grieg has also set to music and which should be rendered by soprano voice.

1. Peer Gynt and Ingrid This is also called “Ingrid’s Complaint” and _“Brautraub_,” or the robbery of the bride.

It is the first of the scenes in the drama which Grieg has rendered into music, and represents one of the earliest escapades in the life of the hero, when he attended the rustic festivities of a wedding in the neighborhood, and, seized with a sudden infatuation for the bride, Ingrid, ran away with her to the mountains, in the face of the assembled company.

The first four measures, marked “allegro furioso,” suggest the furious movement and delirious excitement of the flight and pursuit, contrasting ludicrously with the dazed, helpless astonishment of the disappointed bridegroom.

The following protracted plaintive minor strains embody the complainings and reproaches of Ingrid, grieving for a life ruined and happiness destroyed, from which Peer suddenly makes his escape, brutally leaving her to her fate in the hills; and the first four measures are repeated at the close, to indicate that the only lasting impression made upon him by the whole affair was that of the exciting and triumphant moment of his success.

2. Troll Dance This is the most graphic of all the numbers, and is sometimes called “In the Hall of the Mountain King.

” The _troll_ seems to be the Scandinavian mountain spirit, but more of the nature of gnomes, kobolds, and goblins than of the gentle elves and fairies of English lore.

After deserting the unfortunate Ingrid in the forest, Peer fled still deeper into the rugged fastnesses, where he was surrounded at nightfall by a pack of trolls, who alternately teased and entertained him with their pranks and antics, until scattered at dawn by the sound of church-bells in the distance.

The grotesque character of this movement admirably depicts the uncanny mood and nature of the trolls.

The opening measures are light and weird, fantastically suggesting the stealthy footsteps of the gathering pack of trolls, emerging on tiptoe from the mists and shadows of the night, and cautiously surrounding their uninvited guest.

Little by little the movement becomes more impetuous, as the hilarity and excitement increase, until toward the close it grows to an incoherent whirl and rush, above which ring out sharply the gruesome shrieks of the infuriated goblins, balked of the continuance of their vindictive delight in tormenting their victim, by the approach of dawn.

3. Death of Ase On returning to his mother’s hut in his native village, after these and many other adventures, Peer finds her on her death-bed, and remains with her through the night, during which she passes away, enlivening her last hours with the most preposterous tales and pantomimes.

This scene of the drama, in spite of its solemnity and sadness, carries the fantastic to the extreme verge of the grotesque.

The illustrative music is cast in the mold of a “funeral march,” without trio and with but one well-developed theme.

In it Grieg has emphasized only the somber and tragical aspect of the situation, ignoring entirely its touches of ghastly humor.

The utter and crushing despair of a wrecked and disappointed life, of shattered hopes and unrequited and unappreciated maternal affection, sobs through its strains, enhancing the pangs of approaching dissolution.

Its mood is that of unqualified gloom, unrelieved by a single vibration of hope or consolation.

4. Arabian Dance In the interval which has elapsed since the death of Ase, our hero, now in the prime of life, driven by his erratic spirit and love of adventure, has landed upon the coast of Africa, after being fairly hounded out of his own country by the ridicule and contempt of his neighbors.

This scene takes place in an oasis of the Great Desert, where an Arab chief has pitched his tent, and where Peer, mounted on a stolen white charger and clad in stolen silk and jeweled robes, has arrived in the rôle of the prophet to the Bedouins.

A bevy of Arabian girls are dancing before him in oriental costume, pausing to render homage at intervals to the supposed prophet, who reclines among cushions, drinking coffee and smoking a long pipe.

The music begins with a monotonous rhythmical figure in the accompaniment, suggesting the beat of tambourines and castanets, and the melody of the opening strain is weird rather than bright, stealthily playful rather than openly gay, rising soon to a considerable degree of excited movement.

The trio, with its double melody and its languorous warmth of cadence, tells of increasingly involved figures in the dance and a more voluptuous, seductive grace of motion among the dancers.

Then the opening strain is repeated, with its clash of tambourines, its tinkle of silver bangles and anklets, and its mood of repressed, but jocose, humor, beneath a flimsy veil of fictitious gravity.

5. Anitra’s Dance Anitra, the light-limbed and dark-eyed daughter of the chief, has won the especial favor of the prophet, and dances alone before him after her companions have retired.

Peer is enraptured and promises to make her an houri in paradise, and to give her a soul, a very little one, in return for her love and service.

She is not much tempted by the soul, but finally consents to fly to the desert with him for the gift of the large opal from his turban.

Anitra’s dance is more warmly subjective, more distinctly personal in character than the preceding, at once lighter and more rapid, more tender and winningly graceful, full of arch defiance, playful witcheries, and the coquettish confidence of the high-born maiden and practised solo-danseuse, certain of her power and bent on using it to the full, for the complete subjugation of their prophet guest.

We can almost feel her smoothly undulating movements, her swift, but seductive, changes of pose, and those sharp, stolen side-glances, skilfully blended of shyness and fire, flashing from beneath her drooping black lashes, fascinating, but dangerous, like lightning gleams from a fringe of somber cloud.

6. Solveig’s Song Solveig, a Norwegian maiden of Peer’s own village, the earliest and only worthy love of his life, whom he has deserted in a spasm of virtue, feeling himself unfit to remain with her, sits spinning at the door of a log hut, in a forest far up in the North.

She is now a middle-aged woman, fair and comely, and as she spins she sings of her unfailing faith in Peer’s return, her own ever-constant love, and her prayers to God to strengthen and gladden her lover on earth or in heaven.

In the music to this song Grieg has admirably depicted the character of Solveig: beautiful, tender, joyous, and full of hope.

The English translation of the words, which is but a poor and inadequate representation of the original, runs as follows: “Though winter departeth, And fadeth the May;

Though summer, too, may vanish, The year pass away;

Yet thou’lt return, my darling, For thou, love, art mine.

I gave thee my promise, Forever I am thine.

“God help thee, my darling, If living art thou;

God bless thee, O my darling, If dead thou art now.

I will wait thy coming Till thou drawest near;

Or tarry thou in heaven, Till I can meet thee, dear.

” 7. Morning This, the most musical and sensuously beautiful movement of the whole suite, represents daybreak in Egypt, with the desert in the distance and the great pyramids, with groups of acacias and palms in the foreground, against a rosy eastern sky.

Peer stands before the statue of Memnon in the first hush of the dawn, and watches the rays of the rising sun strike upon it, when, true to the ancient tradition, the statue sings.

Soft and mysterious strains of music, monotonous and prolonged, are drawn by the sunbeams from the venerable stone.

The melody of this movement is of extreme simplicity and lyric beauty, pure and fresh as the dawn.

Its cadences swell in power and volume as the sun rises higher; and the full flood of light is transmitted into a full flood of song, as the statue thrills and vibrates with the first kisses of the ardent Egyptian sun.

After the climax, which is full and joyous, but never passionate, the music diminishes and dies away in broken snatches, as the statue, now thoroughly impregnated with light and warmth, ceases to emit those sounds with which it has been said to salute the daybreak for four thousand years.

8. Storm Peer Gynt, now a vigorous old man, is on board a ship on the North Sea off the Norwegian coast, trying to discern the familiar outline of mountains and glaciers through the growing twilight and gathering storm.

The wind rises to a gale; it grows dark; the sea increases; the ship labors and plunges; breakers are ahead; the sails are torn away; the ship strikes and goes to pieces, a shattered wreck, and the waves swallow all.

Peer, true to his nature, saves his life and adds to the list of his sins by pushing a fellow-passenger from an upturned boat which will not support both, and floating to shore.

This, the final instrumental number of the suite, is by far the most difficult, important, and pretentious of them all; and whether regarded from a musical or descriptive standpoint, is unquestionably the crowning effort of the whole work.

It portrays the mood and the might of the tempest with startling vividness, the blackness of the storm-racked clouds, the rage of the wind-lashed waters, the shrieking of the gale through snapping cordage, the almost human complaining of the noble ship, struggling hopelessly with her doom.

In brief, the strength, the power, and the manifold phantom voices of the storm are simultaneously and graphically expressed, and the mood and movement, both in duration and completeness of development, exceed those in any of the other numbers.

At length, however, after the catastrophe, the force of the storm is broken, the fury of wind and waves subsides, and the receding thunder clouds mutter their baffled rage and threats of deferred destruction more and more faintly as they disappear, and the light of morning breaks upon the scene.

Then softly, like the audible voice of the sunlight, comes an instrumental transcription of Solveig’s song of love, previously sung, whose familiar strains symbolically express the idea that her sleepless affection, her guardian thoughts and prayers have watched over her loved one and brought him at last safely through danger and tempest to his native shore.

This symbolic use of Solveig’s song, with its suggestive significance, is in my opinion the happiest and most poetic touch in the whole composition.

9. Solveig’s Cradle Song Solveig, the guardian angel of Peer’s life, represents and appeals to all that is good in his nature.

Her influence, even in the midst of his maddest escapades, has never wholly deserted him, and serves at last as the magnet to draw him back to her and home.

The last scene in the drama represents Solveig, now a serene-faced, silver-haired old lady, stepping forth from the door of the forest hut, on her way to church.

Peer, who in his chaotic fashion has become a prey to disappointment, to remorse, and to fear of death, appears suddenly before her, calling himself a sinner and crying for condemnation from the lips of the woman whom he has most sinned against.

Solveig sinks upon a bench at the door of the hut.

Peer drops upon his knees at her feet and buries his face in her lap.

The sun rises and the curtain falls as she sings her lullaby song of peace and happiness.

Grieg has set these last stanzas of the drama to music under the title of Solveig’s Wiegenlied, or Cradle Song.

They are translated as follows: “Sleep thou, dearest boy of mine!

I will cradle thee, I will watch thee.

The boy has been sitting on his mother’s lap, The two have been playing all the life-day long.

The boy has been resting at his mother’s breast All the life-day long.

God’s blessing on my joy.

The boy has been lying close in to my heart All the life-day long.

He is weary now.

Sleep thee, dearest boy of mine!

I will cradle thee, I will watch thee.

Sleep and dream thou, dear my boy!

” These lines seem to indicate a transition from wifely love to maternal love in the affection of Solveig, with the advent of age.

The moral of the drama, not a very ethical one, but one which has possessed the minds of many devoted women since the world began, appears to be that in love alone is salvation.

Whatever the errors and sins and follies of the man, he is won at last and saved, even at the eleventh hour, by the faith, the hope, and the love of one devoted woman.

Grieg: An den Frühling (Spring Song), Op.

43, No. 6 Among the very few strictly lyric compositions for the piano by Grieg,—a vein in which he was singularly unproductive for so eminent a genius,—this spring song must unquestionably take rank as the best, the most evenly sustained throughout, the most perfect in form and finish, and decidedly the finest as well as most emotional in quality.

The opening notes of the right hand accompaniment fall light and silvery as the soft drops of the April shower upon the waiting woods, when the first faint shimmer of tender green begins to tint the tips of the waving boughs.

Then the melody enters in the left hand with subdued, repressed intensity, warmly, sweetly vibrant, like the upper register of that most passionate of instruments, the ’cello, a melody telling of mild, languorous days and soft, dream-haunted nights, thrilled through by the mysterious throbbing of a new life in the earth’s long-frozen veins; telling of Nature, surprised but radiantly happy, awakening at the touch of her ardent lover, the sudden spring, from her ice-locked sleep, like the slumbering, frost-fettered bride in the old legend of Siegfried and Brünnhilde; telling of summer joys and brightness begotten of their union, of bird songs, sweeter for the long silence, of many-tinted flowers springing in fragrant profusion where the cold white drifts of winter lay but yesterday, as if the snowflakes had all been transformed to blossoms by the magic kiss of the sun; of love as sudden as the spring, as tenderly sweet as its violets, strong as its rushing torrents, but alas!

too often as transient as its fleeting glories.

This sudden, startling thought of pain and disillusion strikes sharply across the mellow, golden current of the stream with a somber threatening note of danger and distress rising to a swift, strong climax of indignant protest or fierce defiance, a contrasting reactionary mood common to certain minds, like those, for instance, of Byron and Heine, aptly illustrated by the following lines, translated from the German of Amentor: “Sing not to me of spring, its flowers and azure skies, Fleeting delusions all to cheat unwary eyes.

Talk not to me of love, its dreams of Paradise.

The charms of spring, the joys of love, are brilliant lies.

” But this dark mood is of but brief duration; it is soon exorcised by the plenitude of sunshine and the exuberance of springtime happiness, and the first melody returns with all its glowing beauty and seductive sweetness, and with a fuller, more fluent, voluptuous accompaniment, suggesting the mingled voices of many streams exulting in their new freedom, or the irregular, intermittent sighs of May breezes, impatient with having to rock all the baby leaves at once.

This composition is technically of only moderate difficulty, but requires for its proper delivery a fine taste, great warmth of feeling, and a telling, sensuous quality of tone for the melody, while the right hand accompaniment in the first movement is kept almost infinitely light and delicate.

The sudden burst of passionate pain and resentment in the climax should be given with extreme intensity and a decided acceleration of tempo, as well as increase in power; followed by an abrupt fall to a caressing pianissimo, and a long lingering hold on the final chord just preceding the return of the first melody, to accentuate the renewal of the softer, sunnier mood.

Grieg: Vöglein (Little Birds), Op.

43, No. 4 A charming and effective supplementary companion piece to the spring song is that exquisitely, daintily fanciful, yet exceedingly brief piece of descriptive tone painting, called “The Little Birds,” published in the same volume of lyrics with the preceding number.

It may be played as an added and appropriate coda to the spring song.

It is one of those graphically realistic productions which tell their own story.

It portrays very literally, by more than suggestive imitation, the blithe twitter of the spring birds fluttering amid the dancing leaves and sunlight, engaged in their delightful occupation of nest-building.

Notice, too, the sudden touch of facetious drollery, so characteristic of Grieg, where the delicate little bird motive is abruptly transferred to the bass register, producing a peculiarly comical, grotesque effect, reminding one of the gutteral hilarity of the spring-awakened frogs in some neighboring pool.

Exceeding lightness and delicacy, combined with a certain playful staccato effect, are the chief technical requisites for the correct performance of this work, which, though small, will well repay careful study.

The tone produced should be crisp and bright, though never rising above piano, and the tempo not exceedingly rapid.

Grieg: Berceuse, Op.

38, No. 1 One of Grieg’s most charming lyrics is this thoroughly unique and characteristic Cradle Song.

This has always been a most attractive and facilely treated subject for piano-compositions, on account of the way in which it lends itself to realistic handling.

The general plan of these compositions is always substantially the same: a simple, swinging accompaniment in the left hand, symbolizing the rocking cradle, and a soft, soothing melody in the right, more or less elaborately ornamented, suggesting the song of the nurse or mother lulling the child to rest.

An almost infinite variety of effect is possible, however, within these seemingly narrow limits, dependent upon the differing ability and personality of the composer, the diversity in melodic and harmonic coloring, and especially upon the environment and conditions conceived of by the writer as the setting or background of the picture.

The range of legitimate suggestion in this regard by means of such works is as broad as that of human experience itself.

For instance, the child imagined may be the idolized prince of a royal line, rocked in a golden cradle with a jeweled crown embossed upon its satin canopy, and guarded by the loyalty, the hopes and pride of a mighty nation; or it may be the sickly offspring of want and suffering, doomed from its birth to sorrow and struggle and disappointment, to a crown of toil and a heritage of tears; or perhaps it may be a fairy changeling, stolen by Titania in some wayward caprice, rocked to sleep in a lily-cup upon crystal waves, or watching, with large, wondering human eyes, the pranks of the forest elves as they trace with swiftly circling feet their magic rings upon the moss, or awaken the morning-glories upon the lawn with a shower-bath of dew.

The lullaby song of the mother may thrill with the sweet content and rapturous joy of a life of love and brightness but just begun, and seemingly endless in its forward vista of ever new and ever glad surprises.

Her fancies may be winged by hope and happiness to airy flights in which no sky-piercing height seems impossible; or her voice may vibrate with the songs of a broken-hearted widow, who guards the little sleeper in an agony of loving fear, as the last treasure saved from the wreck of her world.

As the smallest plot of garden ground possesses the capacity to receive and develop the germs of the most diverse forms of vegetation, from the violet to the oak, from the fragrant rose to the deadly poppy, so these modest little musical forms are replete with an almost boundless potentiality of suggestion.

In the case of this particular work by Grieg, the child portrayed is no delicate rose-tinted girl-baby, downily cushioned upon silken pillows, peeping timidly from a drift of dainty laces like the first crocuses from the feathery snow of April, but the lusty son of a Viking stock, with the blood of a sturdy race of fighters coursing red through his veins, and with a will and a voice of his own, cradled in the hollow trunk of a pine or the hide-lashed blade-bones of the elk, wrapped in the skin of wolf or bear, and lulled to sleep by the rough, but kindly, crooning of a peasant nurse.

May we not fancy the refrain of her song somewhat after the fashion of the following lines?

“Oh, hush thee, my baby;

The time will soon come When thy rest will be broken By trumpet and drum, When the bows will be bent, The blades will be red, And the beacon of battle Will blaze overhead.

Then hush thee, my baby, Take rest while you may, For strife comes with manhood As waking with day.

” Grieg: The Bridal Procession, from “Aus dem Volksleben.

” Op.

19, No. 2 One of the best known and most popular of Grieg’s compositions is the second movement of his piano suite entitled “Aus dem Volksleben” (sketches of Norwegian country life), a work which portrays, with all his graphic power and good-natured humor, a number of unique and characteristic phases of the peasant life in Norway.

This second movement, at once the easiest and most pleasing number of the suite, is intended as a realistic representation of the music of a primitive peasant band, which leads a rural bridal procession, made up of Norwegian countrypeople, on its way to the church.

We may fancy ourselves seated on a bank by the roadside, with a jolly company of villagers in picturesque holiday costume, listening to their jests and gaiety as we await the rustic pageant.

Soon our attention is caught by the sound of distant music, gradually approaching, strange, weird, uncanny music, as if the gnomes and trolls had left their work in the secret mines and caverns of the mountains, where they are ever forging new chains for the fettered earth-giants as their prisoned strength increases, and had turned musicians for a frolic and come forth into the light of day to join the festival.

The rhythmic beat of drums and cymbals, the shrill, strident notes of the fife, the quaint, quavering tones of the pipe and clarinet, mingle in a strain jocosely mirthful, rather than truly gay, and becoming more insistent as it advances.

There is no trace of tenderness, no hint of sweet anticipation, no suggestive undertone of sacred solemnity, in this music.

We miss the warm color and tremulous, sustained effects of the violins, which with us are always symbolic of love.

It seems almost like a musical satire on the tender passion; as if the divine but dethroned Balder (the God of Love in Norse mythology), disgusted by the infidelity and ingratitude of mankind, were employing all his wondrous power as a minstrel to depreciate and deride this his best gift to humanity.

But perhaps we do not rightly appreciate the significance of the music.

As it draws nearer and nearer, growing stronger with every moment, we begin to suspect that perhaps its very rudeness and primitive energy express more truthfully than more delicate, dreamy, finely shaded cadences could do, the idea that human love is one of the elemental forces of nature, underlying and antedating all the subtilizing refinements of civilization, and destined to outlast them, as the rugged granite of the northern mountains antedates and will outlast all the crystal palaces of taste and luxury.

On comes the procession, the music swelling and growing with every step, till as it passes immediately before us it becomes an almost deafening crash of dissonant instruments, each player with lusty good-will doing his utmost to honor the occasion, outvie his comrades, and earn his share in the wedding feast, by making his part most prominent in the general din.

First comes the band, then the bride and groom and the bridesmaids in white, with wands and wreaths, a troop of children with baskets of flowers, then a company of the immediate friends and relatives of the bridal pair, with the older neighbors and acquaintances soberly bringing up the rear.

So they defile before us, and pass on their way down the sunlit country road to the church, the music gradually diminishing as it recedes into the distance, growing fainter and fainter till only occasional shriller notes or louder fragments reach us, and at last even these are sunk in the summer silence.

This movement is in march time and form, and the strict, unvarying march rhythm should be preserved throughout, absolutely without variation.

The tone should be crisp and clear, with but little singing quality, to represent that of wooden wind instruments, but varying in degree from the softest possible _pp_ to the most tremendous _fff_ which the performer is capable of producing.

The player is here afforded an opportunity of testing his powers in that most difficult of all elements in pianism—a long-sustained, evenly-graded crescendo and diminuendo.

To produce its true realistic effect, the music should emerge almost imperceptibly out of silence, increase steadily, but by infinitesimal degrees, to the greatest quantity of tone power which the instrument will produce; then diminish as gradually and steadily till it dissolves into silence again at the close; not stopping at a given point, but simply ceasing to sound.

Those who have heard Rubinstein render the Turkish march from “The Ruins of Athens” will remember it as a masterly model for this effect.

SAINT-SAËNS

1835