Peer Gynt (Grieg)

Peer Gynt, Op. 23 is the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's 1867 play of the same name, written by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg in 1875. It premiered along with the play on 24 February 1876 in Christiania (now Oslo).

Later, in 1888 and 1891, Grieg extracted eight movements to make two four-movement suites: Suite No. 1, Op. 46, and Suite No. 2, Op. 55. Some of these movements have received coverage in popular culture; see Grieg's music in popular culture.

When Ibsen asked Grieg to write music for the play in 1874, the latter enthusiastically agreed. However, it was much more difficult for Grieg than he imagined. "Peer Gynt progresses slowly," he wrote to a friend in August 1874, “and there is no possibility of having it finished by autumn. It is a terribly unmanageable subject.”

"The more he saturated his mind with the powerful poem, the more clearly he saw that he was the right man for a work of such witchery and so permeated with the Norwegian spirit," his wife wrote of him and his music. Even though the premiere was a "triumphant success", it prompted Grieg to complain bitterly that the Swedish management of the theater had given him specifications as to the duration of each number and its order: "I was thus compelled to do patchwork ... In no case had I opportunity to write as I wanted ... Hence the brevity of the pieces," he said.

For many years, the suites were the only parts of the music that were available, as the original score was not published until 1908, one year after Grieg's death, by Johan Halvorsen.

Various recordings have been made of this music. Some recordings that claim to contain the complete incidental music have 33 selections; the recording conducted by Ole Kristian Ruud is split into 49 items. Both recordings include several verses from the drama, read by actors.

The original score contains 26 movements: Movements indicated in bold were extracted by Grieg into two suites.

The complete score of the incidental music includes several songs and choral pieces. The complete score was believed to be lost until the 1980s and has only been performed in its entirety since then. (See the article on Ibsen's play for a list of notable productions, including concert performances of the incidental music.)

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