Till I can meet thee, dear.”
7. Morning
This, the most musical and sensuously beautiful movement of the whole suite, represents daybreak in Egypt, with the desert in the distance and the great pyramids, with groups of acacias and palms in the foreground, against a rosy eastern sky. Peer stands before the statue of Memnon in the first hush of the dawn, and watches the rays of the rising sun strike upon it, when, true to the ancient tradition, the statue sings. Soft and mysterious strains of music, monotonous and prolonged, are drawn by the sunbeams from the venerable stone.
The melody of this movement is of extreme simplicity and lyric beauty, pure and fresh as the dawn. Its cadences swell in power and volume as the sun rises higher; and the full flood of light is transmitted into a full flood of song, as the statue thrills and vibrates with the first kisses of the ardent Egyptian sun.
After the climax, which is full and joyous, but never passionate, the music diminishes and dies away in broken snatches, as the statue, now thoroughly impregnated with light and warmth, ceases to emit those sounds with which it has been said to salute the daybreak for four thousand years.
8. Storm
Peer Gynt, now a vigorous old man, is on board a ship on the North Sea off the Norwegian coast, trying to discern the familiar outline of mountains and glaciers through the growing twilight and gathering storm. The wind rises to a gale; it grows dark; the sea increases; the ship labors and plunges; breakers are ahead; the sails are torn away; the ship strikes and goes to pieces, a shattered wreck, and the waves swallow all. Peer, true to his nature, saves his life and adds to the list of his sins by pushing a fellow-passenger from an upturned boat which will not support both, and floating to shore.
This, the final instrumental number of the suite, is by far the most difficult, important, and pretentious of them all; and whether regarded from a musical or descriptive standpoint, is unquestionably the crowning effort of the whole work. It portrays the mood and the might of the tempest with startling vividness, the blackness of the storm-racked clouds, the rage of the wind-lashed waters, the shrieking of the gale through snapping cordage, the almost human complaining of the noble ship, struggling hopelessly with her doom. In brief, the strength, the power, and the manifold phantom voices of the storm are simultaneously and graphically expressed, and the mood and movement, both in duration and completeness of development, exceed those in any of the other numbers. At length, however, after the catastrophe, the force of the storm is broken, the fury of wind and waves subsides, and the receding thunder clouds mutter their baffled rage and threats of deferred destruction more and more faintly as they disappear, and the light of morning breaks upon the scene. Then softly, like the audible voice of the sunlight, comes an instrumental transcription of Solveig’s song of love, previously sung, whose familiar strains symbolically express the idea that her sleepless affection, her guardian thoughts and prayers have watched over her loved one and brought him at last safely through danger and tempest to his native shore. This symbolic use of Solveig’s song, with its suggestive significance, is in my opinion the happiest and most poetic touch in the whole composition.
9. Solveig’s Cradle Song
Solveig, the guardian angel of Peer’s life, represents and appeals to all that is good in his nature. Her influence, even in the midst of his maddest escapades, has never wholly deserted him, and serves at last as the magnet to draw him back to her and home. The last scene in the drama represents Solveig, now a serene-faced, silver-haired old lady, stepping forth from the door of the forest hut, on her way to church. Peer, who in his chaotic fashion has become a prey to disappointment, to remorse, and to fear of death, appears suddenly before her, calling himself a sinner and crying for condemnation from the lips of the woman whom he has most sinned against. Solveig sinks upon a bench at the door of the hut. Peer drops upon his knees at her feet and buries his face in her lap. The sun rises and the curtain falls as she sings her lullaby song of peace and happiness. Grieg has set these last stanzas of the drama to music under the title of Solveig’s Wiegenlied, or Cradle Song. They are translated as follows: