Peer Gynt Suite no.1 by Edvard Grieg

In this unit we will examine some of the music Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg wrote for the premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt in 1876. The play revolves around the life of the eponymous protagonist who is rather vain, lazy and selfish. The audience is left to draw their own conclusions about his life. Since this is a spoken play, Grieg’s music is simply there to add ambience to the play rather like film music today. This kind of music is called incidental music.