The death of the lake is about what. death oz

The hero of the drama, the peasant Peer Gynt, leaves his native village and goes on a long journey. He experiences amazing adventures, many of which Ibsen connected with episodes from ancient Norwegian legends and traditions.

Inspired by the images of the drama, Grieg wrote music for it. It accompanies individual episodes of the performance, sounds before the start of the action. The composer sang the harsh and beautiful nature of Norway, fantasy and ancient life, simple and sincere human feelings. The beauty of music and its national identity have immortalized Grieg's work.

Two orchestral suites composed by the composer from separate pieces of music for the drama "Peer Gynt" are very popular in symphony concerts.

The first suite consists of four parts, contrasting in character.

The first part, "Morning", paints a picture of light, serene nature. The second movement, "The Death of Oze", conveys the mood of sorrow. The third is "Anitra's Dance" - a light and graceful piece, reminiscent of a mazurka. The last, fourth part - "In the cave of the mountain king" depicts a fabulous procession. The music of each part is built on the development and variation of one musical image.

"Morning". The gentle colors of the morning dawn and the softness of their modulations, the pictures of the awakening of nature have attracted the attention of composers more than once. The expressive possibilities of music make it possible to reproduce this in sounds.

Grieg's play "Morning" is one of the most poetic musical landscapes. Her music conveys not only the colors of dawn, but also the spiritual mood that arises at the sight of the rising sun. She feels a state of peace and serenity. The play is based on a small motif. It resembles a shepherd's tune and is played alternately by flute and oboe.

Throughout the play, the motif is repeatedly repeated and varied. The composer skillfully uses register and timbre colors, techniques of sound representation. The music paints a picture of the gradual awakening of nature - the sun breaking through the clouds, the gentle chirping of birds, the rustling of the wind in the foliage, the murmur of a transparent spring. "Morning" Grieg - one of the best examples of pastoral music.

The great Russian writer Alexei loved this work very much.

Maksimovich Gorky. "Listening to Grieg," he said, "you see wonderful pictures of northern nature: a foggy morning, sunny lawns, fjords and rocks, a peaceful pasture, a quiet stream ...".

"The Death of Oze". This music accompanies in Ibsen's drama the scene of the death of Peer Gynt's mother, old Oze. "The sadness of all the mothers of the world, saying goodbye to their sons, and all the sons, saying goodbye to their mothers, lies in this music" - this is how Kabalevsky explained the content of this play, telling about it to schoolchildren.

Full of deep sorrow, in a slow measured movement, the music resembles a funeral procession, and its chord presentation is the sad and majestic sounds of the organ. Starting muffled in the low register of the orchestra, the theme gradually, as if by ledges, rises higher and higher. Her voice intensifies. Like a sad echo, quiet sighs answer her - chromatic undertones in the upper voice.

By the end of the piece, the sound moves to the lower register and gradually fades. "Death to Oze" is performed only by the string instruments of the orchestra.

"Dance of Anitra" Anitra is a girl whom Peer Gynt meets during his wanderings in the Arabian Desert. She dances light, graceful and graceful.

Like Anitra's mocking and fickle disposition, the music of the dance is very changeable. Each construction, starting in one key, ends in another. Chord dance accompaniment is replaced by staccato octaves. Melodic phrases often break off, echoing in another voice.

"In the cave of the mountain king." Peer Gynt finds himself in a cave - in the palace of the king of the mountains. In the throne room, the courtiers of the mountain king - trolls, kobolds, gnomes gather to celebrate the wedding of their princess with Per (trolls, kobolds, gnomes are fabulous creatures in Norwegian folklore).

Grieg's music figuratively and vividly depicts a fantastic procession.

At the heart of the play is only one theme in the nature of a fairy-tale march. It is repeated several times, remaining unchanged. But the composer varies its accompaniment each time.

At first, the theme of the march sounds in the lowest register, wary and mysterious.

Gradually, the melody is transferred higher and higher, and the accompaniment begins to vary. Smaller durations appear, they introduce some fussiness into the movement. The sound is intensified. The whole orchestra enters. The tempo accelerates - by the end it becomes very fast. And it seems as if the fabulous inhabitants of the cave, as if driven by an unknown force, spun in a swift whirlwind.

Suddenly everything is interrupted by sharp chords. Twice more the melody tries to resume its run. But persistent chords with soaring grace notes, like imperious gestures of a cave lord, stop the procession. The mirage of the fabulous picture instantly disappears.

The second suite "Peer Gynt" includes five pieces. The most famous of them is the "Song of Solveig" - the bride of Peer Gynt, who has been waiting for his return for many years. The sad and tender melody of the song is one of Grieg's most inspired creations.

Music and theater

Music for a drama performance

Theater for several millennia has been a mirror for a person, reflecting the beautiful and bad sides of life. Sometimes - a fairy tale, a dream that you rush all your life, and sometimes - a "magnifying glass", looking through which you suddenly see the funny sides of life, the stupidity and pettiness of human actions. Music often sounds in dramatic performances, creating a special mood, enhancing the feelings of the audience, causing either laughter or tears. Music is a necessary component of such performances. History knows cases when it was she who raised the playwright's play to the level of a world masterpiece.

This happened when the half-forgotten play Egmont by J. W. Goethe, which was not successful when staged in 1787, was suddenly revived to a new life in 1810, staged at the Vienna Burgtheater with the brilliant music of Beethoven. The heroic spirit of lofty tragedy resurrected in her.

A similar fate was prepared for the play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen "Peer Gynt". Only with the immortal music of his compatriot - - a play about the life and adventures of a pariah from a Norwegian village became interesting and significant for millions of viewers and listeners. We will now turn to Grieg's music and tell you more about it.

Edward Grieg. "Peer Gynt"

Fabulously beautiful and majestic Norway is a northern country, the land of rocks and fjords, dazzlingly brilliant mountain peaks and magical northern lights. Folk music is rich and original - songs, dances, fascinating ancient tales, legends. Grieg considered folk art to be the source of his inspiration. “I recorded the folk music of my country,” he said.

In numerous "Lyrical Pieces" (there are 66 of them), "Leaves from an Album", a concerto for piano and orchestra, in romances and songs, he sang of his homeland, the beauty of folk tales.

Grieg's name has become a symbol of Norwegian music. Grieg's most significant work is the music for Henrik Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt. On February 24, 1876, the premiere of the play "Peer Gynt" with music by Grieg took place in Christiania. She was a huge success. This historical performance was the beginning of the world fame of the playwright and composer.

Ibsen's play reveals one of the eternal plots of art: the wanderings of man in search of happiness. The hero of the play, Peer Gynt, is a peasant boy from a Norwegian village. Residents of one of the Norwegian villages told the author of the play that a man really lived in their area who dreamed of traveling to distant lands. And one day he went to seek his fortune...

Per is a visionary and a dreamer. He invents tales about his imaginary adventures. Two people are dear to Peru: mother Oze and the girl Solveig, "so bright" that with a look she can "cause a bright holiday in someone's soul." Even her name - Solveig - translated from Norwegian means "sunny path". Love for his mother and for Solveig, the gift of a storyteller and dreamer is the best thing in Per's soul. But he is so immensely selfish, so striving for wealth that heartlessness and greed take precedence over kindness and unselfishness in him. For grave misdeeds, fellow villagers expel Per from their native places. Mother dies of grief. Solveig, abandoned by him, remains alone. For forty long years she will wait for Per in a distant forest hut ...

In his travels around the world, Peer Gynt several times achieves his dream - fabulous wealth. But, acquiring it by deceit, he loses everything every time. Forty years later, tired, exhausted, Per returns to his homeland. He is old and lonely. He is seized by deep despair: his life has been wasted... But there is only one salvation - Solveig's love, which he regains in her hut - his last refuge.

Grieg's music improved the public so much that subsequently, so that it could sound not only in the drama theater, but also in concert performance, the composer composed two suites for the orchestra.

Let's get acquainted with the music of the first suite and Solveig's Song from the second. All five pieces are contrasting. Our task is to hear and understand what expressive means the composer used when creating various musical images, what is the significance of musical numbers in a dramatic performance.

"Morning"

This landscape piece opens the first suite. In the performance, it sounded like Per's memory of his homeland.

The melody, reminiscent of an unpretentious shepherd's tune, is calm and light, conveys not only the colors of dawn, but also the spiritual mood that arises at the sight of the rising sun. She feels a state of peace and serenity. The music paints a picture of the gradual awakening of nature - the sun breaking through the clouds, the gentle chirping of birds, the rustling of the wind in the foliage, the murmur of a transparent spring.

To indicate the pace, the author added the word "pastorale", which means "pastoral", that is, "shepherd". "Pastoral" refers to works depicting pictures of nature, scenes of rural life. The timbres of wind instruments - flutes and oboes, soloing in the piece - resemble the sound of a shepherd's pipe, and the horn sounds like a hunting horn.

Let's listen to the development of the theme "Morning". The sonority grows from piano to forte, all new instruments are included in the musical fabric. The sound becomes powerful and bright. The middle of the play is especially colorful. As if under the rays of the rising sun, the outlines and colors of objects appear brighter and brighter from the pre-morning haze. The composer painted this picture with the help of harmony. Each time the theme seems to “bloom” anew.

This is how the picture of dawn appears in music. In the center of the middle section, the melody disappears, giving way to harmony, colorful and bold chord combinations. Their pictorial change creates the impression of a flare-up of the colors of the northern landscape. These "dawn" modulations are the culmination of the play "Morning". The entire fortissimo orchestra plays here. Then the sonority gradually weakens, becoming again clear and transparent. The flute sang the melody for the last time, the chords faded away.

The play "Morning" is not only a picture of nature. Music is never limited to depicting any phenomena of life. It always expresses the feelings of a person, his thoughts and experiences. And this play conveys the awakening of delight in the human soul, his admiration for the beauty of nature.

"Death to Oze"

Norwegian newspapers wrote after the premiere of "Peer Gynt": "The Death of Öse" is "a small symphonic masterpiece. Music shocks the listener with the power of grief and pain, expressed with amazing simplicity and sincerity.

Per sits at the bedside of his dying mother and tells one of his most beautiful tales: they are both invited to a magical castle. The crow is already harnessed, they are driving through a snowy field, through a forest. Saint Peter himself meets them. May the owner of the magic castle reward Oze for the kindness and care that Per did not appreciate before!

But then the son notices that his mother is dying. Dragged into a magical fairy-tale world, Oze, peaceful, falls asleep ...

The play begins with a statement of a sad and strict melody. Andante doloroso (slowly, with sorrow) - this is how the author designated the pace and character of the play. The melodic line develops, as it were, with difficulty: rising heavily to low peaks, it sadly falls. Throughout the play, a monotonous, as if constrained, rhythmic pattern is sustained: this is how the rhythm recreates the nature of the funeral procession. The severity and solemnity of the chordal texture (it resembles the sound of a church choir), the gloomy key in B minor, and the slow tempo convey a state of woeful numbness.

After the growing grief, suddenly, as if for a moment, a light shone high somewhere. Perhaps this is the light of a fabulous palace-paradise - where, according to Ibsen's drama, Per rushes with his mother on a dashing horse.

There, Saint Peter is waiting at the gate for us with the keys,
With a bow, he will invite you there ...
...Can't you let my mother in quickly?
What do you say to that, Holy Father?
... And I'll vouch - in the whole world it's kinder,
More honestly, you will not find a single soul!

According to legend, Saint Peter, a disciple of Christ, became the keeper of the keys to the gates of paradise. He allowed only worthy people into heaven, and sinners went to hell.

And yet the music is sad here too: falling lines predominate in the melodic pattern, the melody is woven from half-tone “sighs”, the tension of complex chords is preserved in harmony. Gradually, the color of the music "darkens": the theme is transferred to a low register, and the movement, interrupted by pauses, freezes. The play ends with sad falling intonations.

The play "The Death of Aze" sounds so heartfelt thanks to the orchestration. The composer chose not wind instruments, which usually accompany mourning processions, but string instruments - the warmest, "singing" timbres of the orchestra. They sound soft here, as their sound is muffled by mutes.

"Anitra's Dance"

Rich Per dreams of power and glory. Traveling through the hot Arabian desert, Peer Gynt comes to the leader of the Bedouin tribe. Chief's daughter Anitra - tries to charm Per with her beauty.

After begging Per for money and jewelry, Anitra suddenly hits him on the arms with a whip and gallops back into the desert, leaving Per alone.

The grace of this orchestral piece is determined by the danceability, the variety of strokes of the orchestra's string group. The melody is played by the violins using the arco technique, that is, with a bow, and the accompaniment is performed by cellos and double basses with the pizzicato technique, that is, with a pinch. At the same time, both methods of playing are combined with a “playful” touch of staccato. The finest sounding of the strings is decorated with the timbre of the triangle. In the openwork lace of the strings, its gentle ringing is like the sparkle of precious stones in a beauty's outfit.

The music of Anitra's Dance is full of contrasts. They are most pronounced in the middle section. Here, as in a kaleidoscope, themes change. In these capricious mood swings, the fickle, masterful disposition of an oriental beauty is guessed.

The reprise of the play sounds more colorful, richer than the first part. Imitations, languid chromatic moves are woven into the musical fabric. "Anitra's Dance" is not only a refined and elegant orchestral piece, but also a musical portrait of a charming dancer.

"In the Hall of the Mountain King"

This is a musical illustration for one of the episodes of Ibsen's play. Wandering, Peer Gynt finds himself in the realm of trolls - fantastic evil creatures. The courtiers of the mountain king - trolls, kobolds, gnomes - gather in the throne room to celebrate the wedding of their princess with Per. Per is unaware of the danger and almost dies in a gloomy cave, surrounded by "spirits of darkness".

Grieg's music figuratively and vividly depicts a fantastic procession.

At the heart of the play is only one theme in the nature of the march. It is repeated several times, remaining unchanged. But the composer varies its accompaniment each time.

After the quiet mysterious call of the French horn, the theme of trolls begins. She sounds pianissimo, wary and weightless. Light touches of pizzicato strings, transferred to a low register, depict the stalking steps of the trolls. Music is fantastic, mysterious, mysterious.

Gradually, the melody is transferred higher and higher, smaller durations appear, they introduce some fussiness into the movement. The sound is intensified. The whole orchestra enters. The tempo picks up and becomes very fast towards the end. And it seems as if the fabulous inhabitants of the cave, as if driven by an unknown force, spun in a swift whirlwind.

Suddenly everything is interrupted by sharp chords. Twice more the melody tries to resume its indomitable run. But persistent chords, like imperious gestures of the cave lord, stop the procession. The mirage of the fabulous picture instantly disappears.

Solveig's Song

From the second suite, which includes five pieces, we will talk about the most famous of them.

Solveig has been waiting for Per for forty long years! And he came back to her...

Solveig's song sounded several times in the performance. She became a symbol of love and fidelity. Grieg wrote: "Perhaps, this is probably the only one of my songs where you can find a direct imitation of a folk melody."

The song is framed by a short introduction and conclusion - a sad melodic melody in the folk spirit. The song has two verses. Each verse consists of two contrasting parts - the verse and the chorus.

The melody of the sing-along is narrative and calm. The music expresses both aching sadness, and humility to fate, and enlightenment of feeling, and most importantly, faith.

The chorus sounds graceful and easy, in the nature of a lively dance. The chorus music is Solveig's recollection of the first meeting with Per. Then this dance tune sounded at a noisy village holiday. It resounds throughout Solveig's soul. He is the music of hope and happiness for her.

The sad and tender melody of the song is one of Grieg's most inspired creations.

In addition, other composers wrote music for performances. The pride of classical art is Mendelssohn's music for William Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream", for Alphonse Daudet's drama "The Arlesian", for N.V. Kukolnik's tragedy "Prince Kholmsky", as well as Tchaikovsky's music for A. N. Ostrovsky's spring fairy tale " Snow Maiden".

Questions and tasks:

1. What role does music play in the theatre? What genres of theatrical music do you know?
2. Outline the content of Ibsen's play Peer Gynt.
3. Tell us about the musical language of the play "Morning".
4. What does "pastorality" mean, and how is it reflected in the orchestration of the play?
5. Tell us about the development of the musical image of the play "The Death of Oze". What expressive means does the composer use to create it?
6. What musical means was used to create the musical portrait of Anitra? Name the contrasting sections of the play "Anitra's Dance", the contrasting means of musical expression.
7. Tell us about the character and musical language of the play "In the Hall of the Mountain King". Why does the troll theme sound fantastic? How does the change in tempo in this piece affect the character of the music?
8. Good and evil fantastic creatures act in Scandinavian fairy tales and legends. Listen to Grieg's plays "Kobold", "Procession of the Dwarves" and tell us about the nature and musical language of these pieces.
9. Tell us about the musical images in Solveig's Song. What is the contrast between the chorus and the chorus?
10. Why did Grieg describe Solveig with a song? Tell us about the fate of Solveig.

Presentation

Included:
1. Presentation - 8 slides, ppsx;
2. Sounds of music:
Grieg. Suite "Peer Gynt". In the cave of the mountain king, mp3;
Grieg. Suite "Peer Gynt". Song Solveig, mp3;
Grieg. Suite "Peer Gynt". Death to Oze, mp3;
Grieg. Suite "Peer Gynt". Anitra's dance, mp3;
Grieg. Suite "Peer Gynt". Morning, mp3;
3. Accompanying article, docx.

Two suites from music to Ibsen's drama "Peer Gynt"

Orchestra composition:

First suite: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum with cymbals, triangle, strings.

Second suite: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, bass drum with cymbals, harp, strings.

History of creation

In 1874, Edvard Grieg was already known not only in his own country, but also abroad. He is the author of many romances, instrumental pieces and a Piano Concerto with a pronounced national flavor. Many of Grieg's songs and romances were written to poems by Henrik Ibsen, the greatest Norwegian writer and playwright, whose plays were performed on the theater stage in Bergen. These works were often successfully performed by the composer's wife, Nina Grieg.

The name of Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) became widely known in the 70s of the XIX century. By this time, his philosophical plays "Brand" and "Peer Gynt" appeared. In these works, the writer, after early historical dramas, turned to social, public issues, sharply raised questions about the role of the individual in society, about the life calling of a person. But if in the first of the two named plays the main theme is the identification of this vocation, the desire to fulfill it, then in the play "Peer Gynt" (1867), the theme seems to be turned inside out: the hero seeks not to find himself and fulfill his destiny, but to evade it, "get around" all the complexities of life. The proud thesis "to be oneself", proclaimed with tremendous force by the writer in "Brand", is replaced here by the soothing and ultimately cowardly "to be satisfied with oneself."

Ibsen's appeal to this type of hero is not only not accidental, but absolutely natural for his time. In Turgenev's "Rudin", Shpilhagen's "Mysterious Natures" and many other literary works of that time, somewhat related heroes are displayed - dreamers, people who are not capable of action, who do not find their place in life. These images turned out to be to some extent typical of the period of transition from romanticism to realism, a kind of farewell to romanticism.

The playwright worked on the play during 1867. In October, he wrote from Sorrento: “I have finished a new dramatic poem, which will be published by Christmas.<...>The poem is called "Peer Gynt" - after the main character, about whom you can read something from Asbjornson. For my poem, I did not find very much essential there, but on the other hand, I could dispose of the material more freely ... "

Unlike other writers who took their heroes from an educated society, Ibsen turned to Norwegian folklore. He borrowed the name of the main character and individual motives of the play from Asbjornson's Folk Tales and My and Asbjornson's Fairy Tales, but he saturated his work with sharp topicality, a distinct social sound. Contemporaries saw in it satirical sketches of their society, a caricature of the leavened patriotism of the reactionary circles in Norway, caricatures of individual statesmen.

There is another plan in the drama. These are symbolic images of the Buttonmaker, remelting unfortunate people who have not found themselves; the mysterious Kriva (an analogue of the Krivda of Russian fairy tales), which does not allow the weak to go its own way, but circles it, as a result of which, having passed the life path to the end, a person finds himself where he should have started from; wide-ranging pictures of folk life; national fairy-tale characters; beautiful and majestic Norwegian nature; an eternal hard worker, narrow-minded, but honest and selflessly loving son Ose; finally, the captivating Solveig, a blonde girl with a Holy Book in her hands, is the personification of eternal femininity, the greatness of which the writer saw in the strength and depth of love, unconditional faith in a loved one, readiness for self-sacrifice for him.

Peer Gynt - a character who has a historical prototype, but overgrown with fiction and legends, the writer sated with the features of a typical Norwegian contemporary to him. Bold and charming at first, Ibsen's hero lacks the integrity inherent in the ancient heroes of Scandinavia. Gynt does not care where to go, and he easily embarks on an unknown path, caring only that, having encountered difficulties, he can turn back. He does not care who he is, and therefore he is ready to be a troll with trolls, a slave trader with slave traders, a monkey with monkeys ... He only cares that these transformations are not irreversible. The action of the drama takes place in the mountains of Norway, in the cave of Dovre's grandfather - the Mountain King of Norwegian fairy tales, in the sands of Egypt, in a lunatic asylum, in a raging sea during a shipwreck.

Initially, Peer Gynt is a large five-act drama without division into pictures, but with frequent transfer of action from one place to another (for example, a tiny episode “crashes” into Egyptian scenes: Solveig, waiting for Peer in the hut he built), was not intended for scenes. However, in the winter of 1873-1874, yielding to the persistent requests of friends, Ibsen began to remake the play for staging in the theater. On January 23, 1874, he turned to Grieg with a request to write music, which was supposed to not only illustrate individual moments of the action, but also partially replace it - in those cases when the writer made large cuts in the drama for staging.

Ibsen wrote to Grieg:

I am writing to you with these lines in connection with a plan which I am about to carry out and concerning which I would like to know whether you will agree to take part in it.

The point is this. I intend to adapt for the stage "Peer Gynt", which will soon be released in the third edition. Do you agree to write the necessary music for the play? I will briefly indicate to you how I think to adapt the play.

The first action will be included in its entirety, with only some abbreviations in the dialogues. Peer Gynt's monologue ... it is advisable to use either for melodic declamation, or partly for recitative. The scene of the wedding feast ... could be developed with the help of ballet significantly compared to what is in the book. To do this, you need to write a special dance melody, which would then be repeated under the mute until the end of the act.

The appearance of the three shepherdesses in the second act is left to the composer to illustrate at his own discretion, but by all means let the devilry in! The monologue on pp. 60-62 should, in my opinion, be accompanied by chords - hence also melodeclamation. I will say the same about the scene between Peer Gynt and the woman in green... We should also choose some kind of accompaniment to the scenes in the cave of the Dovre grandfather, but the lines there will have to be significantly reduced. The "Crooked" scene, which will be included in its entirety, also requires musical accompaniment; bird voices must be portrayed by singing; and let the ringing of bells and the singing of psalms be muffled from afar.

For the third act, chords are also needed, but in moderate sizes, up to the scene between Peer Gynt and the woman and the freak ... Then it seems to me desirable to have a quiet accompaniment during the scene with Ase ...

The fourth act is almost entirely released. It should be replaced by a large musical picture that would depict Peer Gynt's wanderings around the wide world; American, English and French melodies could alternate with the main motive of the musical picture. The singing of Anitra and the choir of Arab girls... should be heard behind the lowered curtain in connection with the orchestral music. Then, to the sounds of the latter, the curtain rises and shows, as if in a dream, the picture described on p. 164. Solveig, in the form of a middle-aged woman, sits in the sun on the threshold of his hut and sings. At the end of her song, the curtain slowly lowers, and the music continues in the orchestra, preparing the transition to the picture of a storm on the sea, which begins the fifth act.

The fifth act will appear on the stage as the fourth or epilogue; it also needs to be reduced. Musical accompaniment is needed for p. 195-199. Scenes on the overturned boat and in the graveyard are released. Next... Solveig's song; Peer Gynt's monologue should be accompanied by chords, which then turn into a chorus ... The scenes with the button and the Dovre grandfather will also have to be cut. S. 254 - a choir of parishioners going to church along a forest path; the music marks the ringing of bells and the singing of a psalm in the distance during the next scene, ending with Solveig's lullaby; whereupon the curtain falls, and the singing of the psalms comes nearer and louder.

So approximately I imagine everything and ask you to inform me whether you agree to undertake this work. If you agree, I will immediately turn to the management of the Christian Theater, present the corrected text of the play and arrange for us to stage the play in advance. The fee... we'll split it in half. I have no doubt that we can also look forward to staging the play in Copenhagen and Stockholm. But I ask you to keep the matter secret for the time being and give me an answer as soon as possible.

Yours, Henrik Ibsen"

Thus, the writer attached great importance to the music in the play (it is no coincidence that the proposal to divide the fee in half, as between equal co-authors) and well thought out where and what it should illustrate or replace. The task turned out to be very difficult for the composer: it is always difficult to embody someone else's idea. Not surprisingly, as a result, the score presented by the composer differed significantly from what the playwright intended. But so far the writing has been slow.

After several months of hard work, Grieg realized that he would not have time to finish it by the scheduled date: “Work on Peer Gynt is moving very slowly, and there can be no question of finishing it by autumn. It's pretty damn difficult stuff, except for the individual episodes, like the one where Solveig sings, which I've already written in full. I also made some sketches for the Hall of the Mountain King, but this music literally makes me sick to listen to, it is so imbued with cow pancakes, "super-Norwegian" and "be-your-self-contentment"! However, I hope that irony will also be felt through this ... ”- Grieg wrote in one of his letters in the summer of 1874. He also complained about the complexity of the composition of the drama. Ibsen's skepticism, his sarcasm were alien to the musician, and he, abandoning the idea of ​​embodying the image of the protagonist of the drama in music, as well as illustrating almost all scenes with music and creating melodic episodes, focused all his attention on those episodes that most corresponded to his nature: deep chaste lyrics, genre and everyday images so beloved by him, typical of Norwegian folk fiction.

In autumn, Grieg left for Denmark, and then Germany, but he did not stop working there either. The score was completed in Leipzig on April 16, 1875, and the play, with music by Grieg, premiered in Christiania on February 24, 1876. Already in the first season, "Peer Gynt" withstood 36 performances, and Ibsen rightfully shared the enormous success with Grieg: Norwegian theater critics spoke of him as a full-fledged creator of the play. Ten years later, in January 1886, Peer Gynt was staged in Copenhagen. For this production, Grieg reworked the music, in particular, reorchestrated almost everything. The last appeal of the composer to this music was the creation of two suites, which included four numbers out of twenty-three written. The first suite was composed in 1888 and received op. 46, the second appeared in 1891 under op. 55. In the suites, Grieg included those numbers from the music for the drama that were independent, complete in nature, not following their order in the performance. Very soon, these suites won a firm place in symphonic concert programs.

Music

Opens first suite musical picture "Morning" (Peer Gynt meets the sunrise in Egypt, but before his eyes - his native Norway). A calm, transparent melody sounds, flowing like a mountain stream, intoned by alternating flute and oboe and accompanied by mean chords. Its beginning is akin to shepherd's tunes. In the middle episode, it grows in the rich sound of the strings, and then the whole orchestra, as if the rays of the sun triumphantly flood everything around with their light.

"Death to Ose" - a string miniature, only forty-five bars - is sustained in the character of the middle part of a funeral march with its sad, but enlightened sound. This is a deeply poetic epitaph, striking in its sublime beauty, restraint and laconicism.

The "Dance of Anitra" - the sheikh's daughter, dancing in front of Per, representing the prophet, is a mocking contrast to the previously played music. Easily orchestrated - only a triangle is added to the string group, giving a conditionally oriental character to the sound - it is elegant, graceful; the author's indication "in the tempo of the mazurka" is also emphasized by the emphasis of the last beat of the bar with a fervent trill, which is characteristic of this dance. Flexible melody and colorful orchestration create an image of a captivating, but insidious beauty.

The suite concludes with the march “In the Cave of the Mountain King”, which depicts a picture of Per’s stay in the kingdom of Dovre’s grandfather. Starting barely audibly with double basses and bassoons in a low register, as if approaching from afar, it gradually gains strength. A simple, even primitive melody directly coincides with the Scottish folk tune, perhaps heard by the composer in the family (recall that his paternal ancestors came from Scotland). It resembles the theme of the previous issue: as if the girl, met by the hero of the drama in the desert, is a werewolf of the same forest evil spirits (in the drama, the scene with Anitra is in the next action, after the adventures of Peer Gynt in the kingdom of the Dovre grandfather). The march grows, sounds full and powerful. Only here, finally, the entire composition of the orchestra is used. Development occurs due to the inclusion of new registers, new instruments, an increase in the strength of sonority; brilliance is achieved by changing the keys and instruments that perform the theme. The music gradually grows, approaching like a terrible avalanche.

Second suite"Ingrid's Complaint" begins. It is opened by several measures of allegro furioso, which sounds in almost the entire orchestra (without trumpets and double basses). This music was borrowed by Grieg from the orchestral introduction to the first act of the drama - "In the Wedding Yard". Its theme is related to the most peculiar folk dance of Norway - Halling. Then the lamento of the strings enters - the lament of the bride, kidnapped by Per right from the wedding and abandoned by him the next morning. This is a melodious, wide-flowing, pathetic melody. The laconic miniature ends just as it began: with a few bars of furious sound.

The “Arabian dance”, performed in front of Per in the Arabian desert, is sustained in conditionally oriental tones with solo wooden instruments against the background of a clear rhythm, with a deliberately broken melody, caricatured juxtaposition of the sharp whistling sounds of a piccolo flute and a bass drum. In the central episode, entrusted with one string, colored by the strikes of a triangle, the languid melody of the first violins is counterpointed by the flexible counterposition of the cellos.

"The Return of Peer Gynt" - a picture depicting a storm on the sea off the coast of Norway (symphonic introduction to the fifth act), is the dramatic center of both the suite and all the music for the drama. Fanfare exclamations, excited tremolo strings, their chromatic passages not only recreate a picture of the raging elements, but also carry the symbolic meaning of the life catastrophe of a person who has always taken detours.

The “Song of Solveig”, beautiful and peaceful, in a fragile orchestration without brass and percussion instruments, with the inclusion of a harp, completes the suite. The melody of the song is a kind of generalization of the images of Scandinavia: it is simultaneously close to the Swedish folk song "Oh, beautiful Värmland, my native land" and the Norwegian "I came home late." Her first violins gently intonate, other strings entwine with undertones. Soft woodwind and harp chords create a gentle accompaniment. In the second section of the song, intonations of springar folk dance appear.

L. Mikheeva

Grieg's music for Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt ranks among such high examples of this genre as Beethoven's Egmont, Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Glinka's Prince Kholmsky, Bizet's Arlesian. Created for a theatrical production, the music for "Per Gynt" acquired the value of an independent work of art.

The full score of "Peer Gynt" includes twenty-three numbers, among which are introductions to five acts of the drama (To the first act - "At the wedding", to the second - "Ingrid's Complaint", to the third - "In the depths of the forest", to the fourth - "Morning", to the fifth - "Return of Peer Gynt to his homeland".), songs (Solveig's song and lullaby, Peer Gynt's serenade), dances (at Ingrid's wedding, Arabic dance, Anitra's dance), fantastic ("In the cave of the mountain king ”) and lyric-dramatic orchestral episodes (“The Death of Oze”), melodramas.

The ratio of music and drama that Grieg establishes is distinguished by its originality. Among the musical numbers of "Peer Gynt" there is no one that in a generalized form, would convey in a concentrated form the main idea of ​​the work, like Beethoven's overture to "Egmont", or would cover the main plot-figurative lines of the drama, like the prelude from "Arlesian" by Bizet, or recreate the circle of images, the overall color of the dramatic work, like Mendelssohn's overture "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Separate numbers of Grieg's music emphasize, reveal different images, situations of Ibsen's drama: the sublime, pure lyricism of Solveig's image, the tragedy of Oze's death, the poetry of nature, the brightness of fantasy. The composer, as it were, reveals the richness of the poetic facets of this deep and complex work, saturated with social and philosophical generalizations.

The plot outline of Ibsen's work is briefly as follows: Peer Gynt, a young peasant boy, is expelled from his native village and outlawed: he seduced and abandoned someone else's bride. Yes, and all the behavior of Per, a dreamer and a dreamer, is not consistent with the norms of morality accepted among people. Per goes to foreign countries. And now Peer Gynt, already an elderly man, is the owner of untold wealth. Behind him is a shameful trade, the slave trade, ahead of him is only one prospect: the profitable use of his wealth. A cynic and egoist, devoid of ethical and moral ideals, Peer Gynt (once full of spiritual aspirations) is ready to strangle the people fighting for freedom and happiness with his gold. The fate of Per is full of vicissitudes. He loses his treasures. Driven by the spirit of adventurism, he reaches a "high position" among the dark Arab tribes, playing the role of a prophet.

Peer Gynt returns home. Years of wandering have not enriched him: he has squandered his spiritual strength, his conscience is burdened with crimes, he is poor. Per finds himself in the forest where he once lived, expelled from his native village. Here, in Per's hut, his beloved Solveig has been waiting all these years. The infinite spiritual beauty and power of Solveig awaken in Pera a deep awareness of the loss of his life, his human "I":

She saved, and he squandered ...
Oh, if only I could start over...

In the image of Peer Gynt, Ibsen exposes people whose understanding of the beautiful and the denial of the petty, inert, dream and aspiration are not translated into action, into the struggle to achieve the ideal of life.

Imagine it, wish it,
Want ... but - to do? No, I don't understand.

These words of Peer Gynt are the key to understanding his image. Per - the bearer of the accusatory idea - is interpreted by Ibsen in many ways. Per is a visionary and a dreamer, almost a poet, because by the power of his imagination he can make people transport himself to a fictional world. Per understands the purity, spiritual beauty of Solveig and, loving her, runs away from her, because his conscience is weighed down by many misdeeds. Percy is a cynic who does not recognize the criteria of morality and duty, his actions are driven only by a sense of selfishness.

The image of Peer Gynt, rich in complex experiences, is opposed in the drama by the modest and sublime image of Solveig - the embodiment of spiritual purity, love, fortitude.

These main characters of Lady Ibsen against a vitally diverse and stylistically diverse background: here are realistically bright, juicy sketches of a Norwegian village, and grotesque, sharply satirical types of modern bourgeois society, and fantasy, boldly invading the real plan of a dramatic poem, and, finally, symbolism , which helps to generalize, concentrate the philosophical conclusions of the author.

Grieg loved this work of Ibsen very much and understood it in all its depth (In 1903, Grieg wrote about this play: “Only in recent years has it become clear how amazing the image created by the poet as a national characteristic was. Ibsen ruthlessly revealed the dangerous side of our people” .). But "for himself", for embodiment in music, he chose only those motives and images that were close to him and that resonated in his creative imagination.

Grieg's "Peer Gynt" received wide acclaim in the form of two orchestral suites. IN first suite included "Morning", "The Death of Oze", "Anitra's Dance", "In the Cave of the Mountain King". Bright and joyful feelings (“Morning”), the tragedy of the end of life (“The Death of Oze”), an elegant genre sketch (“Anitra's Dance”), “violent” fantasy (“In the cave of the mountain king”) - these are the contrasting images of the suite.

In the play " Morning"("Morning" is an introduction to the fourth act of Ibsen's play, which tells about Per's wanderings in Africa. According to O. Levasheva's apt remark, "Morning" is rather an afterword to the first, "Norwegian" acts of the drama, rather than an introduction to the "Arab" act. ) bright colorful painting (nature is combined with subtle lyricism. The play is based on the variant development of one pentatonic melody. Sounding at the beginning alternately with the flute and oboe, it is perceived as a roll call of the tunes of the flute and horns. This creates a feeling of a wide space, air:

Pure harmonic colors (triad - the main type of harmony), bright, unexpected in comparison with each other (E, Gis, H), are perceived as colors in a picturesque landscape. With each new repetition of the tune, melodic variants appear that link similar phrases into a single melody. In the rich, wide-ranging sound of the string group, this picturesque music is filled with lyricism, a sense of joy, and fullness of life. With a few strokes at the end of the piece, Grieg expands concrete-figurative associations: horn solos and moves close to the sound of hunting horns, light trills of flutes - all this is perceived as forest voices against the background of silence, peace of morning nature (long figurations; on pp woodwinds in F major, strings in B flat major).

« Oze's death”(The third act of the drama, Oze is the mother of Per.) is a work of great dramatic power. Grieg's laconicism seems to reach the limit here. As if in one breath, the composer leads the initial concentrated, stern image to a huge tension, a dramatic culmination. And from it - to light and mournful sounds (The opposition of harsh, dramatic and light images is accepted in the composition of funeral marches.):

The laconic musical image, on the development of which the play is based, combines the measured pace of the march with the severity of the chorale and mournful song intonations. When it is repeated in the second sentence of the period, the tension intensifies due to the aggravation of harmony (DD34 with a reduced fifth instead of D) and a different dynamic coloring. The repetitions of the period with a gradual increase in sonority, an increase in the “volume of sound” and tonal contrasts (B minor - F sharp minor - B minor) - these are the means by which tension is achieved, the dynamics of the first part of the two-part form.

The second part, bright as the realm of dreams into which Peer Gynt drags the dying Oze with his fantasy, does not disturb the general movement of the music: here the structure and rhythm of the melody are the same. But its descending chromatic intonations, the constant striving of harmony towards the foundation, towards the tonic (in the first part, the movement of harmony went from the tonic to the unstable), the general descending line of the melody and the fading sonority - all this is opposite to the development of the first part. The variety in the sound of this piece is achieved by very modest orchestral means: it was written for the string group of the orchestra.

IN " Anitra's dance"(The fourth act of the drama. Anitra - a girl from an Arab tribe - dances and sings in front of the "prophet" Peer Gynt.), with almost the same modesty of orchestral means (only a triangle is added to the string group), the composer achieves rare timbre brilliance.

The sound of the string group, heterogeneous due to the use of agso and pizzicato, muffled and open sound, is “encrusted” with the silver of the triangle.

In the play, every detail of the texture is expressive. The graceful, plastic melody is polished with many dashed and dynamic nuances, decorated with trills, grace notes; the melody, whimsical in rhythmic pattern, relies on a clear dance figure of accompaniment:

The finale of the suite - " In the cave of the mountain king"(The second act of the drama. Per falls into the possession of the Dovre grandfather ("mountain king")) is a bright and colorful dynamic play. Its structure is simple and peculiar: when the theme is repeatedly carried out without changing the melody, each time it appears surrounded by an increasing number of voices, with new figurations in the texture, enhancing its quirkiness and dynamics. This corresponds to the image that underlies the play: a discordant dance, an increase in movement, a hubbub.

A simple and angular theme corresponds to sharp and monotonous textural strokes throughout the piece - jerky rhythmic figures on a weak beat of the measure, an even "fraction" of the bass, as well as the uniformity of harmonic coloring. The theme is very clearly traced in the meager orchestral texture of the beginning: the cellos and double basses pizzicato and the bassoon alternately lead the theme and the accompaniment figure:

The gradual increase in sonority from the beginning to the end is the main means of dynamics of this piece.

Second suite Peer Gynt consists of the following pieces: Ingrid's Complaint, Arabian Dance, Peer Gynt's Homecoming, Solveig's Song. Such a composition, in which lyrical pieces play the role of beginning and conclusion, speaks of their leading role in the suite cycle.

« Ingrid's complaint"(Second act of the drama. Ingrid - a girl, a bride, whom Per seduced and abandoned) - a dramatic play. The mournful lyrical lamentation song is framed by a sharply rhythmic and tense-sounding theme: this is how Ingrid now remembers the dance tune that sounded on her wedding day:

The drama, confusion of this lyrics is opposed by bright lyrics " Songs Solveig».

Ibsen connects the most poetic pages of the drama with the image of Solveig, a peasant girl; All his life Solveig waits for Per in a forest hut in the mountains. The role of music in creating this image, extremely sparingly traced in the text of the drama, was provided by Ibsen (One of the scenes of the fourth act, which tells about the wanderings and adventures of Peer Gynt in Africa, takes the viewer to Norway. On the stage, the winter forest and Solveig's hut; the action is limited only Solveig's song about the infinity of her love).

Grieg with great artistic flair managed to convey the very essence of Solveig's image - her spiritual purity and fortitude, and - with a very light touch - those external features with which we associate our ideas about Solveig.

Solveig's song, subtly lyrical, seems to be woven from the intonations and rhythms of folk tunes. Among Swedish and Norwegian folk songs there are songs - prototypes of the Solveig melody:

But the connection between Grieg's melody and folk music is wider. Grieg for Solveig's song selects many sounds characteristic of Norwegian folk music. In folk songs, one can often find a calm tread, a stable rhythmic warehouse, a characteristic rhythmic figure, melodic turns of Solveig's song:

Norwegian folk melodies are characterized by a punctuated rhythm. Many lyrical folk songs include a contrasting dance sequence:

Before and after the song itself, a wonderful tune sounds. Close in character to the lingering and thoughtful tunes of a horn, it “fits” the imaginary landscape all the more clearly because its last, fourth intonation is echoed twice. The song itself, simple in intonation structure (gradual movement of the melody and moves along triads, characteristic of Norwegian music), smooth (evenness and uniformity of rhythmic figures, uniformity of accompaniment chords), sounds modest, restrained and majestic. With each new phrase, the penetration of the melody grows: first, due to the greater tension of the harmonies (the repetition of the melody with a different harmonic content: in the first case - T and D on a sustained fifth bass, in the second - modulation in C major), then - due to the sharpening of the expressiveness of individual intonations. This significance, the penetration of each intonation extends even to the usual, it would seem, cadence turn of the melody at its end (rhythmic increase in the final intonations):

The light and gentle dance chorus (in the version for voice it is a vocalization) reveals a different facet of the image: the joy and light of youth that Solveig has preserved in her soul.

Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" is "as much national as it is brilliant and profound." These words of Grieg can also be attributed to his music, which combines a rare depth of characters, realism and versatility in the transfer of life images with national brightness.

R. Shirinyan

Edvard Grieg was attracted by plans of a large scale. “I dreamed about them - unfortunately, my health did not allow me to do this,” said Grieg. But nevertheless, he tried his hand in this direction, writing a number of vocal-symphonic dramatic scenes and paintings. These include: "At the gates of the monastery" op. 20 (for female voices - solo and choir - with orchestra), "Return to the Motherland" op. 31 (for male voices - solo and choir - with orchestra) and "Olaf Trygvason" op. 50 (for soloists, choir and orchestra). Bergliot, op. 42 (recitation with orchestra), and music for the play "Sigurd Jorsalfar" op. 22 and 56.

These works of the oratorio-symphony plan, written to the texts of Bjornstjerne Bjornson, are united by a unity of purpose: using folk historical legends and the heroism of the sagas, Grieg wanted to create a national opera based on their images and plots. He failed to do this, because monumental concepts, as a rule, did not work out for him. But in communication with Bjornson, Grieg more deeply comprehended the features of the national character, the history and life of his people. All this prepared the accomplishment of that great artistic task that immortalized the name of Grieg.

We are talking about the music for Henrik Ibsen's play "Peer Gynt", in which the typical features of the composer's work are concentrated. Characteristic in this regard are the poetic images that excited him, and the means of expression chosen for their embodiment.

In his play, Ibsen used elements of Norwegian folk tales, but saturated them with a new, modern sound. His drama is imbued with the pathos of protest, the revolt of the human personality against the social conditions that fetter and disfigure it. At the same time, by means of scourging satire, Peer Gynt is exposed, whose egoism and selfishness lead to discord with reality. The first part of the drama shows him in the real conditions of Norwegian peasant life. This simple and naive guy is endowed with unbridled imagination and conflicting feelings. The best aspects of Per's character are connected with his love for Solveig. (In Norwegian pronunciation - Sulveig; we keep the transcription established with us.) and to his mother Oz. But in an insatiable thirst for adventure, he betrays Solveig, kidnaps someone else's bride Ingrid, and then gets carried away by the daughter of the Dovre Grandfather, the ruler of the mountain bowels. Per goes on a journey, his mother dies, only Solveig - as the embodiment of the image of the motherland - will wait for his return ...

The second part of Ibsen's play departs far from folk poetic sources. The writer sharply reveals the pernicious influence of bourgeois morality on those who are ethically unstable in their aspirations and actions. After many years of wandering, becoming a rich man, Per goes home. But the storm breaks the ship, its wealth perishes, and with them the dreams of a new life. Tormented by conscience, the old man Peer Gynt returns to his native village to die in Solveig's arms; her love brings him forgiveness.

Ibsen wrote his drama in 1867, seven years later it was staged in Norway. Grieg gladly responded to the writer's proposal to supply the production with music and himself developed a plan for the musical composition. He devoted twenty-three numbers of the score to the description of lyrical-dramatic, landscape and genre episodes, and later, in the late 80s, he composed two suites from this music, op. 46 and 55 which contain nine numbers.

The features of the individual rebellion of the hero of the drama are not reflected in Grieg's music. In general, the image of Per, as Ibsen created it, is absent from the composer's score. The latter pursued other goals: he brought the content of Ibsen's play closer to folk poetic sources.

Solveig's Song (No. 8) runs through the entire score as a kind of leitmotif of the motherland. (The numbering is given according to the consolidated version of both suites.). This music, extremely pure and chaste, belongs to the best, poetic creations of Grieg. In her melody, echoes of a truly folk Norwegian tune are heard:

Masterfully included in the song (in major) intonations and rhythms of the sprinter - they sound like in a haze of memories. The profound, expressive, simple and stern music of “The Death of Oze” (No. 2) is just as close to the folk origins - it is sustained in the spirit of a funeral march. for folk Norwegian music using the Lydian quart (increased IV degree):

Also, the usual for the composer "kobold" images are developed in the scene "In the cave of the mountain king" (No. 4). But here they are endowed not with playful everyday, but with elemental, demonic features - we are talking about the legendary Dovra Grandfather. Masterfully the composer unfolds the music of this scene - from the mysterious-sounding passage of the theme in the bass pp, gradually increasing the dynamics and raising the register, to a powerful and sonorous performance.

Lyrical and fabulous everyday moments are complemented by landscape sketches. Morning (No. I) has an idyllic pastoral character, in the music of which spring fullness of feelings blossoms. Grieg's favorite melodic turn, associated with the underlining of the fifth degree and interspersed with the main theme of this pastoral, is noteworthy - it is widely used in Solveig's Song, but there the melody went down from VII to V steps, here rises from III to V:

Grieg contrasts idyllic sound morning picture evenings on the seashore in the scene "The Return of Peer Gynt to his Homeland" (No. 7), whose music, in its romantic and rebellious coloring, is close to Wagner's overture to the opera "The Flying Dutchman". In the second suite, this picture is directly adjacent to Solveig's Song - the transition is carried out by attacca, thanks to which the light theme of the homeland that permeates Grieg's score is even more set off.

Three rooms stand out. Great drama is noted in "Ingrid's Complaint" (No 5), framed by frantic exclamations of despair:

And, finally, the oriental scenes, full of grace and grace, serve as a contrast to the general national color - "Anitra's Dance" (No. 3) and "Arabic Dance" (No. 6).

The figurative richness, high artistic merit put Grieg's music for Ibsen's Peer Gynt on a par with such outstanding examples of theatrical music as Beethoven's Egmont (for Goethe's play) or Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream (for Shakespeare's play), " Prince Kholmsky" by Glinka (to the play by the Dollmaker) or "The Arlesian" by Bizet (to the play by Daudet). At the same time, Grieg's theatrical music has peculiar features - it appears refracted through the prism of the people's consciousness. The composer speaks here on behalf of the people and for the people. In these nine small pieces, he touches on many aspects and phenomena of national life and expresses them with that classical simplicity that is characteristic of the best works of world musical art.

People say that it is impossible to get around fate, everyone will experience what is destined for him. The main thing is not to betray yourself, to believe in love. The famous Norwegian playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen addressed this topic in his work "Peer Gynt". It was created during the years of the junction of the realistic with the romantic. The author was afraid that the poem "Peer Gynt" would not be understood outside of Norway, as it is very rich in the features and characteristics inherent in this country. But the work gained worldwide fame, it was translated into many European languages. Later, the composer wrote great music, which made the work even more popular. Ibsen's drama has already been filmed several times, many directors have staged it.

A little about the author

The popularity of the plays by the famous Norwegian playwright in European countries has grown relatively recently. If we talk about the masters of modern literature, then his name can be put next to such talents as Zola and Tolstoy. Ibsen's worldwide fame is associated with the ideas he preaches in his works. His work is an achievement of realistic Western European drama, which had a huge impact on world art.

Ibsen forced the viewer to be his co-author and think along with the characters. The writer considered the presence of the author's idea to be the most important thing in dramas. He portrayed people in clashes, everyday conflicts, leaving the ending to the reader's fantasies. Most often, the playwright portrayed representatives of wealthy Norwegian families, for whom money problems were important. At the same time, each of his stories is considered from the point of view of humanity, so that readers can discuss.

The main characters of Ibsen are people who understand their duty, analysts who choose their own type of behavior, strive for the truth by any means. Thanks to this, Henrik Ibsen became a symbol of realistic art. His work is aimed at the renewal and inner freedom of man. His earlier plays were "Struggle for the Throne", "Comedy of Love", "Warriors in Hengeland". Readers fell in love with his poem "On the Heights", the play "Brand". Actual themes of reality were touched upon by the author in the plays "Ghosts", "Woman from the Sea", "Wild Duck", "A Doll's House", etc. The last, very tragic and penetrating work of Ibsen was the play "When we, the dead, awaken." The worldview of the playwright was significantly influenced by the psychological trauma he suffered in childhood. After the ruin of a wealthy father, he had to go to the very social ranks and earn his living.

The history of the creation of the play "Peer Gynt"

Being already famous and receiving a writing scholarship, Henrik Ibsen moved with his family to Italy. There he worked diligently for two years on the creation of two masterpieces - the plays "Brand" and "Peer Gynt". Many theater critics consider these plays as a whole, because they have similar ideas - self-determination and the formation of a person's personality.

For a whole year (1867), the playwright worked on the play. He wrote to his friends that he dreamed of releasing it by Christmas. The name of the poem "Peer Gynt" is identical to the name of the protagonist of the work. Ibsen took a lot of useful material for the play by studying the work of Asbjerson. From his fairy tales, the writer borrowed the name Peer Gynt.

Creating his hero, the playwright decided to turn to Norwegian folklore. Along with folk art, topical problems sounded with a distinct social sound. The writer tried to show satirical sketches of that society, to portray the reactionary circles in Norway. Many readers were able to see caricatures of statesmen in the heroes of the poem.

Initially, the play consisted of five acts and was not divided into pictures. The action was transferred from one place to another. The premiere of the play on the stage, with Grieg's music already written for it, took place in 1876. The first season had 36 performances.

The main characters of the poem

The poem of Henrik Ibsen is replete with a variety of all kinds of heroes. Here are the main and secondary characters of "Peer Gynt":

• the widowed peasant woman Oze (Per's mother);
• Peer Gynt is the main character;
• blacksmith Aslak;
• the elder of the wedding feast, his guests and musicians;
• family of immigrants;
• daughters of immigrants - Helga and Solveig (the second is Per's beloved);
• the gentleman on the farm - Hegstad;
• his daughter Ingrid;
• shepherdesses;
• Dovr sage;
• major and minor trolls, their children;
• witches;
• a pack of gnomes, goblin, kobolds;
• an ugly creature (supposedly the son of Per);
• cries of birds;
• travel society;
• thief;
• daughter of the Bedouin chief Anitra;
• groups of dancers, slaves, Arabs;
• manager of a lunatic asylum in Cairo;
• Minister Hussein;
• patients and caretakers of a lunatic asylum, etc.

Where the action of the drama does not take place! First, these are the Norwegian mountains, then the cave of the Dovre Elder. After that, the main character falls into the Egyptian sands. The next place of his stay is a lunatic asylum. At the end, he gets into a shipwreck and gets out of the raging sea.

Per's mother Oze loves her son very much and worries that he is too popular with the girls. She offers the young man to marry the farmer's daughter Ingrid. But he falls in love with the daughter of a peasant sectarian - Solveig. The wedding nevertheless took place, but Per soon left Ingrid, as he was fascinated by Solveig's unusualness. The young man had to hide.

Further, the plot of "Peer Gynt" is transferred to the forest. On the way of the hero there is a Woman in a Green Cloak, whose father was the King of Dovre. Peru wanted to marry her and become a prince. The Dovra elder sets an impossible condition for the young man - to become a troll. The inhabitants of the forest beat the guy, but Oze and Solveig, who loves him immensely, come to the rescue.

It would seem that everything is going to happiness, but suddenly the daughter of the Dovre elder brings a little freak to Peru and says that this is his son, who is ready to kill his father with an ax. She demands that Per leave Solveig. He goes on the run. Before leaving, he manages to visit his sick mother.

So 50 years have passed. Peer Gynt became a prosperous man and an arms dealer. One day he gets into the company of monkeys, to which he was also able to adapt. Then fate takes him to the Sahara desert, he meets with the Arabs.

After that, the summary of "Peer Gynt" takes the readers to Egypt, where the hero imagines himself to be a historian and archaeologist. Being completely gray-haired, he decides to return to his native places. After many ups and downs, the aged Solveig joyfully meets him at the doorstep. It helped her all these years to wait for her beloved that she saw herself in him. This is the summary of "Peer Gynt" - a play where the hero is a dreamer, a person incapable of action, unable to find his place in life.

The main problems and themes of the play

Many literary scholars believe that in the image of Peer Gynt, the author showed a typical hero of the 19th century. Per is an irresponsible opportunist, an unreliable person. The main problem can be called the impersonality of Ibsen's contemporaries, which was inherent in bourgeois society. Many young people of that time did not have a special strong-willed core. Ibsen very clearly raises the problem of the gray existence of the middle peasants. Per grew up on his mother's fairy tales, which is why he became such an odious figure. Dreams and reality mingled in his mind. The theme of "Peer Gynt" is relevant to this day.

The meaning of the image of Peer Gynt

The main character of the famous playwright's poem is the personification of the Norwegian folk ideology. It has already been mentioned above that he had a historical prototype. Ibsen enveloped him in legends and fiction, gave him the features of a typical representative of his country contemporary to him. At first, Per appears as a bold and charming hero, without a goal, like many other Scandinavian characters. The young man does not care where to go, he easily follows an unknown path. His main fear is to be able to go back in difficult cases. Per does not choose his environment - he communicates with trolls, slave traders, monkeys ... The main thing is that everything is reversible.

The all-conquering power of love

Peer Gynt did not fulfill his human destiny: he buried his talent as a poet, he does not even really know how to sin. His creation was an ugly freak troll. The hero sees how much Solveig loves him, he is tormented. What did Gynt want to achieve? He so wanted to merge creativity and life into one ... Solveig had been waiting for her beloved all her life. At the end of the poem, the hero escapes punishment for his dissolute life, because his main creation was love.

Performances of the play on stage

Every summer in Norway (Vinstra) there is a festival dedicated to the poem. This is just an incredible open-air action that accurately conveys the color and mystery of the legends of the Norwegian people.

In 1993, the Russian artist Antonina Kuznetsova performed a solo performance "Peer Gynt". In 2011, he played a major role in the play "Peer Gynt", directed by Mark Zakharov. In Russia, performances with the same name were also staged in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk.

Music to the motives of the poem

The famous composer Edvard Grieg, a contemporary of Ibsen, wrote excellent music for the play "Peer Gynt". Already in the 20th century, the composer Werner Egk released an opera of the same name. In 1986, a three-act ballet was staged with an epilogue by Alfred Schnittke.

Screen version of the poem

Since 1915, Ibsen's work has been filmed 12 times. This was done in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, France, Hungary, Norway. In 2006 director Uwe Janson released the latest version of Peer Gynt.

The value of the work in world culture

Only love makes a person whole and gives meaning to his life - this Ibsen idea has firmly entered the world culture. The Peer Gynt Sculpture Park has been created in the Norwegian city of Oslo. The famous artist N. Roerich made beautiful scenery for the production of the play at the Moscow Art Theater. Astronomers in honor of one of the heroines of the poem named the asteroid Aas. The image of Peer Gynt in world culture is as eternal as Faust, Prince Myshkin, Odysseus ... He captivates many creative people, thanks to which Ibsen gained world fame.

Norwegian fairy tale by N.K. Roerich

P.E. Fedorov

Ph.D. in History of Arts

Sketches of scenery and costumes for a number of theatrical performances occupy an honorable place in the artistic heritage of Nicholas Roerich. At the beginning of the 20th century, Roerich fruitfully collaborated with the St. Petersburg Ancient Theater, the Moscow Art Theater, and designed performances for the Diaghilev seasons in Paris. Widely known are his magnificent sketches for Lope de Vega's play Fuente Ovehuna, Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, Maeterlinck's plays Sister Beatrice and Princess Malen, Borodin's opera Prince Igor, and Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring.

In the interview given below to the reader, given by Roerich to the correspondent of the theater magazine "Masks" (1, 1912), we are talking about the production of G. Ibsen's play "Peer Gynt" at the Moscow Art Theater in 1912. The production was carried out by K.A. Mardzhanov and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. L.M. Leonidov (Peer Gynt), young A.G. Koonen (Anitra) and other actors of the Art Theatre. The scenery created according to Roerich's sketches perfectly harmonized with the music of Edvard Grieg.

Roerich's design of "Peer Gynt" was recognized by his contemporaries as an unconditional victory for the artist. In the same issue of the Masks magazine, the well-known theater critic S. Glagol wrote: “It is impossible not to welcome the theater's appeal to such genuine artists as Roerich. In this case, it was even especially successful, because the very nature of Roerich's painting is extremely suited to the spirit of this dramatic poem. And all the scenes where the characteristic features of Roerich came forward brighter are the best scenes in the decorative sense; these are: the red mountains on the stage with the shepherds, the hearth in Gynt's hut, the desert, Gynt's hut in the spring and the same in the winter. This last picture is perhaps even the most successful in that approximation to realism, which is always inevitable on the stage with real people.

Leonid Andreev also wrote about Roerich’s “Peer Gynt”: “The traveler has never seen such Norway... But it is very possible that the poet, dreamer and sad loser Peer Gynt saw such Norway in his dreams - his native, beautiful, beloved Norway. Here, as it were, the wonderful world of Roerich and the old, familiar land come into contact - and this is because all people, before whom the free sea of ​​dreams and contemplation has opened up, almost inevitably stick to Roerich's "alien" shores.

In an interview with the Masks magazine, Nikolai Konstantinovich expresses a number of thoughts, the consonance of which can be found in his own literary works of the 1910s and 20s. So, Roerich’s dream is very interesting, in our opinion, “about the advent of that golden age for art, when the work of an artistic team will again become possible, when the artist of one or another branch will no longer feel his isolation, and works of art will be created simultaneously by many hands and will be an expression of not individual, but national moods...” In this regard, it is appropriate to recall Roerich's story “The Flame”, which is entirely devoted to the problems of artistic creativity, the spiritual mission of art, the interpenetration of art and life. Here the idea of ​​a synthesis of the arts, a kind of creative conciliarity, the idea of ​​a spiritual community of artists from different branches of art sounds clearly. “Art unites mankind”, “art is one and inseparable”, “art has many branches, but the root is one”, - these are the principles of Roerich's worldview, formulated by Nikolai Konstantinovich himself in his articles. The idea of ​​the anonymity of creativity, which Roerich defended as one of the achievements of the coming era, also sounds here.

As can be seen from the words of Nikolai Konstantinovich, the work on the play "Peer Gynt" at the Moscow Art Theater was not accidental for him. Roerich is interested in theater as a dynamic art, having a different arsenal of artistic means than static painting. Movement, time, space - these are the categories with which the artist works in the theater. It is this novelty of the ever-changing process of creativity that attracts Roerich. His interest in the theater is stable. After all, a few years after Peer Gynt, he will write the play Mercy, thus not being satisfied with the role of only an artist, but wishing to create an independent theatrical work in the genre of a kind of mystery.

Roerich considers Ibsen's play as a fairy tale. Legend, tradition, parable, legend, fairy tale are favorite genres of Nikolai Konstantinovich himself. His paintings are largely based on legends, legends, apocrypha. The fairy tale attracts Roerich with the opportunity to create a certain world without a definite geography, without concretization of time and place.

Nevertheless, Roerich is always historical and real in a certain sense. Sketches for "Peer Gynt" are reminiscent of northern Roerich landscapes, evoke images of Karelia and Finland, as if anticipating the Ladoga period of the artist's life and work. Contemporaries noted that Roerich, who had not been to Norway, managed to create an atmosphere inherent in this northern country by the power of his artistic imagination and intuition.

For Roerich himself, according to him, "Peer Gynt" is a play about the beauty and joy of the sacred hearth. Ibsen's individualist Gynt, who thinks he embodies the principle of "being yourself", but in fact is only "self-satisfied", during his adventurous life at the very end of it ends up in the house of his bride Solveig, who has been waiting for him all his life. And this is where the insight happens.

"PEER GYNT:

When did I truly live, in harmony with fate? When was I strong? And where was I? Oh, if you know, then reveal the truth.

SOLVEIG:

In my hope, faith and love!

In me alone!

The egoistic structure collapses, Gynt begins to see clearly. It is this moment that Roerich singles out as true. The rest of Per's life for Nikolai Konstantinovich is only an insignificant episode, despite all its exoticism. This is a deeply ethical concept based on the ideas of Creation and Beauty as the main principles of human existence. Roerich gravitates toward harmony, Gynt's extreme individualism is unacceptable to him. The "sacred hearth" of human community, fire as a symbol of the spirit and heart of man, which is the embodiment of the One Reality - these are the categories that inspired Nikolai Konstantinovich while working on the design of the performance.

And very important, as it seems, is the position of Nikolai Konstantinovich in relation to his own reading of the play by Henrik Ibsen. Roerich does not absolutize his opinion and leaves the right to his friends for a different interpretation of the play, the performance, and the decoration.

In a long essay devoted to his pre-revolutionary work and published in 1918, Sergei Ernst wrote about the artist's work on the play "Peer Gynt": "The whole majestic and diverse world of Ibsen's drama received a worthy display in the scenery of the master. With a wide eye he saw the red-scarlet, sun-scorched "Egypt", and the fragile golden-green cover of the northern "Hills", and the formidable harmony of "Gegstad", and the sad solitude of "Peer Gynt's Hut". Consonant with the mood of the drama and the picturesque manner of sketches - measuredly and magnificently jubilant beats of tempera, in recent years, more and more attracting the attention of the master with the richness of its capabilities.

With this quote I would like to complete our brief commentary and offer the reader an interview with Nicholas Roerich. By the way, the name of the journalist who recorded the interview is not written in the magazine.

Roerich about "Peer Gynt"

Large, beautiful living room. Lines of good old Dutch and Flemings look down at me from the greenish-gray walls: Brueghel, De Blaise and many others. Their gilded frames are somehow strangely in harmony with the stylish furniture of the empire, and all this merges into one beautiful chord caressing the eye. And suddenly in the office you are immediately in a different world, in a different atmosphere, in a laboratory and workshop, in which, under the brush of an inquisitive painter, all his best works of recent years were born. Also gray-green walls, but there are only three things on them. Here is Serov's drawing: an interesting brown-haired woman with sharply defined eyebrows and a small aquiline nose. There is something in the face that makes you remember the portraits of Kutuzov, which are now so many in shop windows. This is a portrait of the artist's wife and, in fact, the granddaughter of the most illustrious prince of Smolensk. On the other wall is an etching by Galen from illustrations for the Kalevala (The Curse of Kulengo). Further on is Nesterov's soft, full of tender sadness elegy “Two Frets”. Crates of flints, Stone Age tools, canvases of paintings on stretchers and, blocking them, on easels, several new paintings that are still in work are piled up against the walls.

But the reflector went out, throwing a sheaf of electric light on the paintings, the whole workshop was drowned in a greenish twilight, and the fiery angel became ominous and dark. An electric lamp under a green cap fills the oak table with soft light, and it is so strange to see on this table a heap of various papers, expensive books, brushes, jars and vials with some mysterious compositions; right there is an ancient stone ax dug out of a mound where it has lain for thousands of years and right next to it in the routine blue cover of the Case of Uniforms of Ministers! ..

A few minutes later we: me and the owner of the house, are already sitting at the table. Tea is steaming on the table in beautiful crystal glasses. I look at the artist, at his youthful, cheerful Varangian face, and eagerly listen to his lively speech.

Do you want to know about my view of Peer Gynt, what I wanted to achieve in my sketches of the production, and how far the theater managed to do it? Please. I'll be happy to talk about it. For an artist, working in the theater is a great joy, and working with the Art Theater is even a pure joy. The theater has long recognized the need to turn to artists in order for them to direct the production. After all, every performance is a series of paintings continuously replacing each other, and since this is so, it is clear that these paintings must be created by the artist. This has been talked about for so long and it has become a truism for us artists for so long that it is time, finally, to put it into practice everywhere and always. That is why it is impossible not to welcome the participation of artists in any production. And for the artist, this is also a great joy, because in the theater he feels like the creator of a completely new fascinating art ...

It is high time to discard the division of painting into specially decorative, easel and mural painting. If each industry has its own technique, then anyone who wants to can easily cope with it, and reality has already confirmed this. One has only to remember what kind of decorators Korovin, Golovin, Bakst and others turned out to be.

Do not think, however, that the artist considers his task accomplished if he has painted well the scenery commissioned for him. After all, these decorations are nothing more than a background. Pictures will be created from them only when people appear and act against their background. And this interests the artist no less than how they light up or how they turn his scenery. After all, everything that will happen on the stage can completely run counter to what the artist imagined against the backdrop of the scenery he painted. Thus, it is quite natural that, along with the scenery, the same artist should also create the costume of each character, the entire props, in general, everything that the viewer's eye sees on the stage. Gynt's hearth. Roerich sketch.

But since all this will be conceived and created according to one outlined plan by the artist, then how can he remain aloof when all this, created by his hands, will be put into action and come to life? After all, it is far from indifferent to him where this or that character will stand, whether the crowd will stand in a dense mass on the right or will be scattered all over the stage. Thus, the artist participates in the staging of the entire performance as well as the director and all the actors, at least in everything that has to do with the visual impressions of what is happening on the stage.

Here the Art Theater is on the move again, far ahead of all the others, and that is why it is so especially joyful to work with it. I wrote for Diaghilev's opera in Paris, and did for other theatres, but, having fulfilled my order, I always had to reluctantly withdraw and remain aloof until now. As a result, against the backdrop of my scenery and in the costumes I created, what often happened on the stage was not at all what I pictured in my imagination and, I confess, it is always painful to see this or learn about it.

It hurts just as much as it would hurt to see that, against the backdrop of a landscape I painted, someone attributed a figure completely alien to him.

Not so in the Art Theatre. In any case, here you feel at every step that you are just as necessary to the director and actor as they are to you. Here you feel the joy of working together, you feel that you are not only not a stranger here, but your own, dear, close and desired. You feel that everyone here has the same desire to do the best possible, you feel that Art really lives here, which is so close and dear to you.

But it is only possible to give oneself to the cause and work energetically, feeling all this. With such an attitude to business, the theater makes it possible to dream about the advent of that golden age for art, when the work of an artistic group will again become possible, when the artist of one or another branch will no longer feel isolated, and works of art will be created simultaneously by many hands and will not be an expression of individual, and public sentiment ...

At the Art Theatre, I have yet to work with Stanislavsky, who is carried away and busy with another production. I have long been in love with the genius of this amazing stage artist. It is enough to look at least once into the young eyes of this gray-haired man, so that the thought of working with him becomes tempting. But having finished my work with Mardzhanov, I will say that I did not have to regret now. In this director, I soon sensed a genuine artist who works beyond the influence of any random impressions, who knows how to draw his inspiration from the work itself and proceed from it alone in everything. It was extremely interesting for me to meet the work of another great stage artist, V.I. Nemirovich, who, moreover, possesses a remarkable and subtle critical instinct ...

However, I feel that I am digressing and talking about the Art Theater, and not about Peer Gynt. So let's get back to it.

What is Peer Gynt to me? It is difficult for me to answer this in two words. I will only say that if this creation of Ibsen did not unfold before me a marvelous fairy tale, then I would not begin to work. But since this is a fairy tale, then, first of all, there is no definite time, no ethnography and geography. A fairy tale is always out of time and space. True, the famous couleur locol is inevitable, but it also happens in a fairy tale. He even gives it some special intimacy and charm, but if the viewer guesses the age in the production or relates it to some decade, I will consider the production a failure ... What does Peer Gynt's fairy tale tell about? Maybe I understand it very subjectively, but it seems to me that this tale is a song about the beauty and joy of the sacred hearth. I am sure that many will see in Peer Gynt not that, but a true work of art, and the fact that in it everyone, as in life itself, will see his own, most dear to him, most interesting to him, and Peer Gynt is so many-sided that various illumination of everything outlined in it, perhaps more than anywhere else.

So, this is a fairy tale about the role of the sacred hearth in the life. Don't take this narrowly. For me, the hearth is that sacred, inextinguishable fire, which from prehistoric times gathered a human collective around itself. Was it the fire of the hearth, i.e. the hearth of a family, whether it was the hearth of a tribe, a whole people, a hearth of a temple or some deity, but always only he gathered people around him and only around him did they become themselves, i.e. what the "Master" intended them to be. Only here man has always found his happiness. And, of course, the first step in creating a hearth for a modern person is the family hearth. Even the instinct of the race leads a person to it. Peer Gynt, as the bearer of a pronounced individual principle, is the destroyer of this hearth and, like a destroyer, he runs away from Solveig, not daring to cross the threshold of the house where she entered to light the flame of the sacred fire, but when the old Oze dies, and Gynt is seized with a thirst to brighten up her last minutes, he willy-nilly returns to this hearth, for only around him is everything good possible, only around him does a person reveal himself. Gynt returns to the same hearth at the end of his life, for only near him, at the feet of his priestess Solveig, can he find his happiness.

You ask what the rest of Gynt's life is, but all of it is nothing more than a completely accidental episode that lasted for many years, which Gynt needed in order to return him to the true path and lead him to the same hearth. Gynt's life, his real life, does not last long, and it can be expressed in a few lines. He rejected the hearth, violated its sanctity and lived on earth for a long time as an exile, and only at the end of his life he realized that he himself had ruined his life, that he had to bring all the wealth of his creativity to the creation in all the beauty of his hearth. But if, thanks to this, his hearth has remained only a smoldering fire, then all the same, only its warmth warms him in his last minutes. All attempts to build life outside of any hearth, i.e. outside of other people, lead Gynt only to complete bankruptcy. All these attempts pass for Gynt like a dream that lasted for years, full of the most vivid visions, and I wanted to emphasize this in the production. Everything that happens to Gynt from the moment he leaves for the mountains until the moment he returns to Solveig must pass before the eyes of Gynt's Hut. Roerich's sketch of the viewer as something accidental and incidental to Gynt's true life. It seems to me that it was successful, but whether it was possible to do it for the auditorium, I do not know. It is possible that something did not work out. Many of these random episodes are too enticing in their picturesqueness. How, for example, not to get carried away was the pictures of Gynt's meeting with the world of trolls. For me, this is such a definite change of colorful chords that, perhaps, I involuntarily got carried away by it more than I should have in the general architectonics of the performance. The transition from the red mountains with their Bacchic shepherds and through the lilac mountains with a green woman to the black-green cave of the Dovra grandfather and the black velvet darkness of the picture of Gunt's struggle with Kriva enclosing them is such a musical chord for me that I could not help being carried away by it, although I confess sincerely, this last scene, and indeed much in Peer Gynt, is something contrived and, in fact, completely alien to my understanding of Gynt. Ibsen reacted too vividly to the life around him, he was too much a man of this life, and therefore he added a lot to his fairy tale, completely alien to it. Some scenes, such as the scene with representatives of various nations, are so contrived, so alien to the spirit of everything else, that they could only be staged in the spirit of the grotesque, and without such a setting they would inevitably jar me.

You want to know about my impression of the first performance. It goes without saying that much in my imagination appeared to me brighter and better. Such is the fate of the artist, in whatever field he works, but still I will say that against the background of what was done by me, the theater unfolded such a wondrous spectacle, which I will not forget for a long time. The scenes seem especially successful to me: the appearance of shepherdesses in the Red Mountains, the scene at the hut in winter, the death of Oze, the cabin and the finale ...

Something failed. For example, the scene in the desert. When Gynt is left alone and wanders among the empty hammocks of his fugitive companions, one does not get the impression of that loneliness that one feels when reading a play. But what was the director to do to avoid this? Don't hang hammocks? But then the picture with gentlemen tourists, stupidly hanging in hammocks with their soles towards the audience, would disappear, the picture would disappear, immediately giving the scene the character of a grotesque. Did it have to be sacrificed? Force tourists, running away, to take hammocks with them? But this cannot be done. And, willy-nilly, I had to sacrifice the impression of Gynt's loneliness in the desert. In general, something has not been achieved even in a purely decorative sense, but you yourself have to work at least once in the theater in order to know how much it is difficult to achieve here from what is easily achieved in the picture.