Descriptive Analyses of Piano Works / For the Use of Teachers, Players, and Music Clubs

by Edward Baxter Perry

Grieg: The Bridal Procession, from “Aus dem Volksleben.” Op. 19, No. 2

One of the best known and most popular of Grieg’s compositions is the second movement of his piano suite entitled “Aus dem Volksleben” (sketches of Norwegian country life), a work which portrays, with all his graphic power and good-natured humor, a number of unique and characteristic phases of the peasant life in Norway. This second movement, at once the easiest and most pleasing number of the suite, is intended as a realistic representation of the music of a primitive peasant band, which leads a rural bridal procession, made up of Norwegian countrypeople, on its way to the church.

We may fancy ourselves seated on a bank by the roadside, with a jolly company of villagers in picturesque holiday costume, listening to their jests and gaiety as we await the rustic pageant. Soon our attention is caught by the sound of distant music, gradually approaching, strange, weird, uncanny music, as if the gnomes and trolls had left their work in the secret mines and caverns of the mountains, where they are ever forging new chains for the fettered earth-giants as their prisoned strength increases, and had turned musicians for a frolic and come forth into the light of day to join the festival. The rhythmic beat of drums and cymbals, the shrill, strident notes of the fife, the quaint, quavering tones of the pipe and clarinet, mingle in a strain jocosely mirthful, rather than truly gay, and becoming more insistent as it advances.

There is no trace of tenderness, no hint of sweet anticipation, no suggestive undertone of sacred solemnity, in this music. We miss the warm color and tremulous, sustained effects of the violins, which with us are always symbolic of love. It seems almost like a musical satire on the tender passion; as if the divine but dethroned Balder (the God of Love in Norse mythology), disgusted by the infidelity and ingratitude of mankind, were employing all his wondrous power as a minstrel to depreciate and deride this his best gift to humanity. But perhaps we do not rightly appreciate the significance of the music. As it draws nearer and nearer, growing stronger with every moment, we begin to suspect that perhaps its very rudeness and primitive energy express more truthfully than more delicate, dreamy, finely shaded cadences could do, the idea that human love is one of the elemental forces of nature, underlying and antedating all the subtilizing refinements of civilization, and destined to outlast them, as the rugged granite of the northern mountains antedates and will outlast all the crystal palaces of taste and luxury.

On comes the procession, the music swelling and growing with every step, till as it passes immediately before us it becomes an almost deafening crash of dissonant instruments, each player with lusty good-will doing his utmost to honor the occasion, outvie his comrades, and earn his share in the wedding feast, by making his part most prominent in the general din. First comes the band, then the bride and groom and the bridesmaids in white, with wands and wreaths, a troop of children with baskets of flowers, then a company of the immediate friends and relatives of the bridal pair, with the older neighbors and acquaintances soberly bringing up the rear. So they defile before us, and pass on their way down the sunlit country road to the church, the music gradually diminishing as it recedes into the distance, growing fainter and fainter till only occasional shriller notes or louder fragments reach us, and at last even these are sunk in the summer silence.

This movement is in march time and form, and the strict, unvarying march rhythm should be preserved throughout, absolutely without variation. The tone should be crisp and clear, with but little singing quality, to represent that of wooden wind instruments, but varying in degree from the softest possible pp to the most tremendous fff which the performer is capable of producing. The player is here afforded an opportunity of testing his powers in that most difficult of all elements in pianism—a long-sustained, evenly-graded crescendo and diminuendo. To produce its true realistic effect, the music should emerge almost imperceptibly out of silence, increase steadily, but by infinitesimal degrees, to the greatest quantity of tone power which the instrument will produce; then diminish as gradually and steadily till it dissolves into silence again at the close; not stopping at a given point, but simply ceasing to sound. Those who have heard Rubinstein render the Turkish march from “The Ruins of Athens” will remember it as a masterly model for this effect.

SAINT-SAËNS
1835–