In the Hall of the Mountain King

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In the Hall of the Mountain King (Norwegian: I Dovregubbens hall) is a piece of orchestral music, Opus 23, composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, which premiered in Oslo on February 24, 1876. Although a performance of the full piece runs to only two minutes, it has attained iconic status in popular culture and is easily recognized, though not, perhaps, by name.

A fantasy story written in verse, Peer Gynt tells of the adventures of the eponymous Peer. The sequence illustrated by the music of In the Hall of the Mountain King is when Peer sneaks into the Mountain King's castle. The piece then describes Peer's attempts to escape from the King and his trolls after having insulted his daughter.

Contents 1 The Music 2 Other versions 3 In popular culture 3.1 Film 3.2 Television 3.3 Video games 3.4 Other references

[edit] The Music

The famous two-phrase theme, written in the key of B minor, runs thus:

(listen (help·info))

The simple theme begins slowly and quietly in the lowest registers of the orchestra. It is played first by the bassoons, signifying Peer Gynt's slow, careful footsteps. After being recited, the same theme is echoed, but transposed up a perfect fifth (to the key of F-sharp minor, the dominant key) and played on different instruments: these are the King's trolls. The two groups of instruments then move in and out of different octaves until eventually "colliding" with each other at the same pitch; and the trolls, having spotted Peer, give chase. The tempo appropriately speeds up, and the music itself becomes increasingly louder and more melodic.

The Mountain King himself thunders onto the musical stage and runs into Peer, who quickly runs the other way; these actions are depicted with long strings of diatonic steps, interrupted by brief moments of stillness as the Mountain King looks for the hiding Peer. Peer's cover is at last blown, and the music reaches its loudest and fastest point as he runs out of the cave. A series of crashing cymbals and rapturous timpani rolls then burst forward and silence all the other instruments, with the mountain tumbling to the ground and presumably killing the trolls who had been chasing after the fleeing Peer. The piece concludes appropriately -- in both musical and theatrical terms -- with a return to the tonic, and ends on a final B minor chord, signifying Peer's successful escape.

[edit] Other versions

Non-classical covers of In the Hall of the Mountain King

Artist	Album	Song	Note
Apocalyptica	Cult	"Hall of the Mountain King"
Big Brother and the Holding Company	Cheaper Thrills	"Hall of the Mountain King"	Live Performance
Captain Jack	Dance Dance Revolution games	"Dream a Dream"
Delinquent Habits	Merry Go Round	"The Kind"	uses theme
The Diffs	Self-Titled	"Can't Escape"	uses theme
Electric Light Orchestra	On the Third Day	"In the Hall of the Mountain King"
Erasure	The Circus	"In the Hall of the Mountain King"
Hawkwind	Hall of the Mountain Grill	"Hall of the Mountain Grill" (and album title)
Helloween	Walls of Jericho	"Gorgar"	uses theme
Machito		"El Salón del Rey del Mambo"
mc chris		"Peer Gynt"	uses theme
Rainbow	Stranger in Us All	"Hall of the Mountain King"
DJ Ruffneck		"Ruffneck rules da artcore scene"	uses theme
Anselmo Sacasas		"The Hall of the Mambo King"
Saga	Detours
Savatage	Hall of the Mountain King	"Prelude to Madness"
Ska-P	Eurosis	"Simpático Holgazán"	uses theme
SRC	Milestones		medley with Bolero
Van Helsing's Curse	Oculus Infernum	"Tubular Hell"	uses theme
Vernian Process	Catalysts	"In the Hall of the Mountain King"
Vintersorg	Till Fjälls	"För Kung Och Fosterland"	uses theme
Rick Wakeman		"Journey to the Centre of the Earth"	uses theme
The Who	The Who Sell Out	"Hall of the Mountain King"	bonus on the 1995 reissue
Wolf Hoffmann	Classical	"In the Hall of the Mountain King"
The Wombles		"Hall of the Mountain Womble"

[edit] In popular culture

The initially-foreboding and then frenetic melody of In The Hall of the Mountain King has become famous in popular culture, particularly for cinematic and television scoring, and has been used in:

[edit] Film

• The 1931 Fritz Lang motion picture M. Peter Lorre's character, the child murderer Franz Beckert, constantly whistles In the Hall of the Mountain King. (The director's whistling was used, not Lorre's.)
• The 1957 film The Pied Piper of Hamelin
• The [1988] Movie Beetlejuice With Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice.
• The 1993 supernatural thriller Needful Things, based on the book by Stephen King.
• The 1993 thriller Public Access, directed by Bryan Singer.
• The song was used in a trailer for the film How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
• The 2001 film Rat Race, when Duane and Blaine are being pulled up the radio tower at the airport.
• Michael Moore's 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine, during the cartoon segment about gun-toting American history (when the Civil Rights Movement begins and "all hell breaks loose").
• The trailer for the 2003 film Duplex.
• The 2006 Robin Williams/Jeff Daniels comedy RV.
• In a trailer for the 2005 movie Corpse Bride when Victor is running away from the Corpse Bride.
• In a trailer for the 2006 movie Monster House.
• In a trailer for the 2006 movie The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.
• In Woody Allen's Scoop.
• In The Dudesons Movie.
• In Alex Jones's Order of Death after the ritual "creamation of care" in the Bohemian Grove

[edit] Television

• The Ren & Stimpy Show episode Big Baby Scam, when the naked old man with a chicken leg attached to his head whistles it, but it was censored in the United States because it is also an inadvertent reference to the motion picture M.
• The final Beavis and Butt-head episode Beavis and Butt-head Are Dead during flashback scenes of episodes during Principal McVicker's heart attack scene.
• The animated series, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, where background music for Robotnik is based on In the Hall of the Mountain King.
• Garfield and Friends as the theme song of Orson's older brothers.
• The 2006 animated short "Cupid's Last Stand".
• On The WWF/WWE 2001 Vengeance, at the start of the event
• Two Little Einsteins episodes on the Disney Channel use In the Hall of the Mountain King as a theme. In "A Little Einsteins Halloween", the children sing the song while trick-or-treating: "We are here to trick-or-treat...oh, happy Halloween!" In "The Dragon Kite", the children sing the song to remind them of their mission, "We're off to save the kite parade...and find the missing kites!"

[edit] Video games

• Mountain King is a videogame released for multiple platforms (most notably the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200) in the early 1980s by CBS Electronics. The goal of the game is to descend into a mountain, get the fabled Golden Crown and bring it to the Eternal Flame on top of the mountain. Music figures prominently into the game, especially In The Hall of the Mountain King: when you finally obtain the crown, In The Hall of the Mountain King starts to play, and you must reach the Eternal Flame before the music stops. If you fail, you must go get the crown again. If you succeed, you move to the next level.
• Shamus, as its title music.
• The 1983 computer game Manic Miner as its theme song.
• The Commodore 64 computer game "Doriath" as its theme song.
• One of the Jet Set Willy games, "Join The Jet-Set", as the in-game music and the name of a room.
• The 1993 computer game Frontier Elite II, as one of the in-game background tracks.
• The strategy-oriented computer game Hearts of Iron.
• The commercial for Golden Sun used the song in a where a conductor and her orchestra fight a gargoyle and a chandelier that has turned into a dragon.
• An arrangement of it is played in Kingdom Hearts during a battle.

[edit] Other references

• The 1993 Metallica DVD Live Sh#t: Binge And Purge at the San Diego 1992 concert, Kirk Hammet plays a section of this similar to the version included as a .wav file in Windows 95/98
• In The Learning Company's Midnight Rescue!.
• The classic Colossal Cave Adventure contains a central room called "the Hall of the Mountain King."
• The famous British theme park Alton Towers uses In the Hall of the Mountain King as its theme song, and it can be frequently heard as visitors make their way around the park.
• Microsoft included In the Hall of the Mountain King as one of several preinstalled MIDI files in Windows 95, 98, and 2000.
• "In the Hall of the Mountain King" was the first piece played at the 2005 Bastille Day fireworks at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, an impressive spectacle which included "The Girl from Ipanema" and Daft Punk's song "Robot Rock."
• On Apple Macintosh computers, the "Cellos" system voice speaks in a tone sequence similar to "In the Hall of the Mountain King."
• Bumper music for Coast to Coast AM.
• In the album Electrik by Maksim Mrvica in year 2006.