How Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ has reigned in popular culture

Norway’s Edvard Grieg was very passionate about his homeland and composed pieces inspired by Norwegian folk tunes. In his most famous work, Grieg composed incidental music for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, named after its title character, a Norwegian peasant. Grieg took excerpts from his full score and turned them into two suites. 

Though he initially balked at the assignment, Grieg finished the score, which has a little more than 90 minutes of music. One of its most popular tunes, “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” comes from the play’s second act. When Peer Gynt bumps his head on a rock, he dreams that he’s landed himself in a mountain kingdom of trolls. The troll mountain king offers Peer the opportunity to become a troll if he will marry the king’s daughter, whom Peer has mysteriously impregnated with his mind. When the child arrives, Peer decides the troll life isn’t the life for him, and he tries desperately to flee. 

Though the incidental music became wildly popular, Grieg had misgivings about the mountain king scene: “[It] reeks of cow dung, exaggerated Norwegian-ness and trollish self-sufficiency.” But he did recognize the music’s staying power and extracted “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” along with other favorites like “Morning Mood,” for a set of two stand-alone orchestral suites intended for concert halls.  (The CSO will perform Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 in concerts Dec. 5-7.)

The easily recognizable themes helped the suites attain iconic status in popular culture, where they have been arranged or quoted by many artists. Here are some of the most memorable:

“M” (1931)

In Fritz Lang’s made-in-Germany thriller the tune serves as a leitmotif whistled by the serial killer and thus plays a major plot point. Child killer Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) whistles the tune whenever he feels the urge to commit murder. Lorre, however, could not whistle, and so Lang himself is heard in the movie. Film historians regard “M” as one the first movies to employ a leitmotif, associating “In the Hall of the Mountain King” with the Beckert. Later, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he is nearby. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation, a technique borrowed from opera, would become a staple in film.

The introduction of the killer is unforgettable. A girl, Elsie Beckmann (Inge Landgut), bounces a ball against a poster about the murderer who has been terrorizing the town. The silhouette of a man moves into frame, casting its shadow over the word Mörder (Murderer). Throughout the sequence to follow, the audience is not shown the murderer’s face but is introduced to his quirk of whistling a few bars of “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

Nero and the Gladiators, 1961

The British instrumental rock group Nero and the Gladiators had a hit version of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” in 1961. Led by keyboard player Mike O’Neill as “Nero,” the group took its name from the band’s costumes, mostly plastic, salvaged from the MGM swords-and-sandals epic “Quo Vadis” (1951), filmed at Cinecittà studios in Rome. In a weird turn of events, the BBC refused to broadcast the Gladiators’ surf-guitar treatment of Grieg because of the BBC’s then-policy of banning pop or rock versions of classical-music works.

“Mad Men,” “The Mountain King” (2008)

Centered on the topics of advertising, domestic life and gender relations in the early ’60s and subsequent cultural changes about to ensue in the United States,  the series “Mad Men” used Grieg’s work as a jumping off point for its Season 2, Episode 12 titled “The Mountain King.” In this episode, Don Draper goes AWOL from Sterling Cooper, his Madison Avenue advertising firm, and visits Anna Draper, the wife of the California man from whom he took his post-war persona. As he enters the home, a young student of Anna Draper’s is practicing “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and the work sends Don into chills as he realizes the consequences of his actions.

“Man” (2012)

This short video by British animator Steve Cutts uses Grieg’s work to propel the action, set 500,000 years ago. Then modern man appears. With indifference and cruelty, he treats the animals and nature as a consumer. Arrogantly, he turns the world into a dumpster. However, someone is watching, and Man learns he’s the weapon of his own destruction.