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Piano sheet music for kids · Classical · Level 6: Moving on
In the Hall of the Mountain King
Free beginner piano sheet music: A minor, 4/4, 16 bars. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
The troll march from Grieg’s Peer Gynt (1875): one creeping tune, played four times, louder each time. It is in A minor, which has the same signature as C major, no sharps or flats, but a home note of A; Grieg wrote it in B minor. The right hand starts with the thumb on the A below middle C, so the five fingers cover A B C D E, and bar 2 has the chromatic twist that makes the tune sound sly: a D sharp, then a D natural and a B flat. In bars 9 to 16 the same tune moves up to start on E, with F sharp and G sharp. The left hand is Grieg’s own: four plodding crotchets a bar, alternating A and E.
Practice tip: Play it very quietly to begin with and add a little weight each time the tune comes round, finishing loud; the rhythm must stay exactly the same however loud it gets. Find the D sharp and the B flat in bar 2 before you start.
A short history
Grieg wrote “I Dovregubbens hall” for the second act of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, where Peer, having run off with the troll king’s daughter, is dragged before the king in his mountain hall and the trolls close in on him. The music was heard with the play at its first performance in Christiania (Oslo) on 24 February 1876 and became the finale of the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46, in 1888.
The piece is a single theme repeated over and over, each time louder, faster and higher, until the whole orchestra is stamping. Grieg himself was not fond of it: in a letter he complained that it reeked of cow-pats and exaggerated Norwegian-ness, and hoped the irony would come through.
It has since been borrowed by everyone from Fritz Lang’s film M (1931), where the murderer whistles it, to rock bands and video games, and is one of the most recognised pieces of music ever written.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Edvard Grieg, 1875
- Key
- A minor
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 16 bars
- Tempo
- Sneaking along, crotchet = 108
- Difficulty
- Level 6: Moving on (piece 174 of 201)
- Type
- Classical
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
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