NotePlayMusicGrieg never changes the melody of “In the Hall of the Mountain King”—he just repeats the same 4-bar phrase louder, higher, and faster until the cave collapses.
The creeping troll motif (transposed to A minor for piano)
Eight eighth notes climb and fall by step before three sharp chromatic stabs on the fifth degree.
Henrik Ibsen asks Grieg for troll music
In 1874 the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote to his compatriot Edvard Grieg asking for incidental music to bring his verse drama Peer Gynt to the stage. In Act II, the boastful anti-hero Peer sneaks into the subterranean kingdom of the Dovregubben—the Old Man of the Dovre Mountains—where a court of trolls, goblins, and gnome-creatures surrounds him.
Grieg actually found the piece grotesque while writing it. In a letter to a friend he confessed: “For the Hall of the Mountain King I have written something that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and ‘to-thyself-be-enough-ness’ that I literally cannot bear to hear it, though I hope the irony will make itself felt.”
One 4-bar phrase, zero development—pure escalation
Most Romantic composers develop a theme by changing its rhythm or fragmenting its motives. Grieg does the exact opposite: he locks the melody into a rigid, obsessive four-bar loop. It starts in the cellos, double basses, and bassoons at a hushed pianissimo (pp), tiptoeing up the minor scale and snapping back with two chromatic neighbor chords.
Instead of rewriting the tune, Grieg turns three dials simultaneously: register (handing the theme up to violins and winds), dynamics (crescendo from pp to fff), and tempo (marked Più vivo and Stringendo al fine—“squeezing the tempo faster and faster to the end”). Within two minutes, a stealthy tiptoe becomes a stampede.
Why pianists love playing it in October
Although Grieg’s original orchestral score is in B minor, transposing the theme down a whole step to A minor puts the entire opening climb on the white keys (A–B–C–D–E) with just two spicy chromatic off-ramps (D♯–B and D–B♭). That makes it one of the most rewarding dramatic showpieces a beginner or intermediate pianist can learn.
Italian terms in action: staccato, crescendo, and stringendo
Grieg’s chase works because three performance markings team up: staccato (short, detached steps at the start), crescendo (gradually getting louder), and stringendo / accelerando (gradually pressing the tempo faster). When you practice it, start deliberately slow and quiet so you have room to build!
Historical sources & references
- Edvard Grieg, Letter to Frants Beyer (27 August 1874): Grieg’s famous description of composing the Dovregubben scene for Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.
- Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 (C.F. Peters, Leipzig, 1888): First orchestral suite edition containing Movement IV: “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”