Sunday 4 September 2011
Tune of the Day: The Death of Aase
from Edvard Grieg's “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1”
This intensely emotional lament constitutes the second movement of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. As Phil, who suggested the piece, pointed out, this is a great tune for developing expression.
Like many other numbers from Grieg's Peer Gynt, this piece is frequently heard in popular culture. For instance, it is played in The Simpsons episode “Coming to Homerica”, in which Norwegian workers are forced to leave their poverty-stricken town and emigrate to Springfield. A fast version of the tune was even used as a background music in the popular 1995 video game Descent.