In the Hall of the Mountain King (theme, arranged for beginners)

Learn this piece

Composer

Edvard Grieg (Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 No. 4)

Arrangement

Musicanyya practice material

Level

Beginner

Key

A minor

Metre

4/4

Tempo

84 BPM

Length

16 bars, about 1 minute

Hands

both

Trains

Grieg's creeping theme in A minor: steady eighth notes over held chords of A minor and E major. Start quietly, keep the eighths even and a little detached, and let the long notes ring.

How to practise it

• The theme is steady eighth notes over one held A minor chord. Start at 50 BPM with the Metronome and keep every eighth the same length, a little detached.
• Bar 2 is the tricky one: D-sharp, B, D-sharp, then D, B-flat, D, so the same note changes from sharp to plain within the bar. Loop bars 1-2 until you read it without stopping.
• At the end of bar 4 the tune drops to a G held for two beats. Use that time to move your hand down to the E that starts bar 5, and loop bars 4-5 until the move is calm.
• Bars 5-12 repeat almost the same two-bar figure four times over an E major chord, with G-sharp all the way. Once bars 5-6 are secure, most of this part is learned.

Where this score came from

Arrangement for this app (CC0)

Melody from The University Society, 1918 (https://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/piece-info.cgi?id=1888), public domain; left-hand chords our own (CC0)

Changes from the source: Left-hand block chords are our own (CC0). Transposed from B minor to A minor, and up into the right hand's register (Grieg starts the theme deep in the bass). Slower: quarter = 84 instead of Grieg's 138, and without his speeding up. The left hand holds A minor under the theme, where Grieg's bass moves to the C major chord in its last bar, and E major under the answer, where his bass moves between E and C. The source's bars 6-17 and 22-25; the bars between are left out. Bars 9-12 are an octave lower than in the source: Grieg repeats the answer an octave higher; here it stays where the hand already is. Bar 4: the bar goes down G-E-C (Grieg's fourth eighth, E, is left out) to the lower G of Grieg's octave, a quarter note before it, so the hand has time to move to the answer below. Bar 16: the tune ends on A, the key note, instead of G: Grieg's tune goes on.

Other versions

• In the Hall of the Mountain King Advanced

More at this level

• Amazing Grace (arranged for beginners) Traditional (American hymn tune "New Britain")
• Lullaby (arranged for beginners) Johannes Brahms (Wiegenlied, Op. 49 No. 4)
• Waltz, Op. 39 No. 15 (theme, arranged for beginners) Johannes Brahms (Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 39 No. 15)
• Greensleeves (arranged for beginners) Traditional (English, 16th century)
• Jingle Bells (opening refrain, arranged for beginners) James Lord Pierpont