In the Hall of the Mountain King (Norwegian: I Dovregubbens hall) is a piece of orchestral music composed by Edvard Grieg for the sixth scene of act 2 in Henrik Ibsen's 1876 play Peer Gynt.
It was originally part of Opus 23, but was later extracted as the final piece of Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, Op. 46. Although (or perhaps because) a performance of the full piece runs to slightly less than 3 minutes, its easily recognizable theme has helped it attain iconic status in popular culture, where it has been arranged by many artists.
The piece is played as the title character Peer Gynt, in a dream-like fantasy, enters "the royal hall of the Old Man of the Dovre (the Mountain King)." The scene's introduction continues: "There is a great crowd of troll courtiers, gnomes and goblins. The Old Man sits on his throne, with crown and sceptre, surrounded by his children and relatives. Peer Gynt stands before him. There is a tremendous uproar in the hall." The lines sung are the first lines in the scene.
Grieg himself wrote: "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 can't bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt." The theme of "to thyself be... enough" – avoiding the commitment implicit in the phrase "To thine own self be true," and just doing enough – is central to Peer Gynt's satire, and the phrase is mentioned by the mountain king in the scene which follows "In the Hall of the Mountain King".
Read more about In The Hall Of The Mountain King: Music, Lyrics of The Song in Peer Gynt
Famous quotes containing the words hall, mountain and/or king:
“The statements of science are hearsay, reports from a world outside the world we know. What the poet tells us has long been known to us all, and forgotten. His knowledge is of our world, the world we are both doomed and privileged to live in, and it is a knowledge of ourselves, of the human condition, the human predicament.”
—John Hall Wheelock (1886–1978)
“... my mother ... piled up her hair and went out to teach in a one-room school, mountain children little and big alike. The first day, some fathers came along to see if she could whip their children, some who were older than she. She told the children that she did intend to whip them if they became unruly and refused to learn, and invited the fathers to stay if they liked and she’d be able to whip them too. Having been thus tried out, she was a great success with them after that.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“The lion cares less about being king of the beasts than about finding his dinner.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)