Two activities for youngsters using and inspired by Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King.

1. Playing A Tune

• Listen to “In The Hall Of The Mountain King”. There is one main tune, or melody, which is played over and over again during the piece. This is the tune that we’re going to learn. It’s quite tricky.

• Here’s the music for it:

• Now learn to play the theme. You will need to practise it for a while to get it fast enough with no wrong notes.
• G# is written as Ab, and D# is written as Eb on some glockenspiels.
• If you’re struggling to learn the whole thing, just learn the blue bits, or the red bit, or the green bit, or the orange bit, and join together with some friends to play the bits all together.

• Listen again to Grieg’s version of the tune. How many times can you hear this tune being played?
• The answer is difficult because the melody changes so much during the piece, but if you said 20, you are correct.

2. Developing Musical Ideas

• Listen to “In The Hall Of The Mountain King”. The main tune happens 20 times during the piece of music. Each time Grieg changes the tune in some way so that it isn’t the same as before.
• Make a list of the changes he makes.
• These are some of the changes Grieg makes: changes the instruments playing the melody; makes it louder or quieter; makes it higher or lower; changes the background music or accompaniment; changes the ending of the melody; just uses a fragment of the melody.

• Play the melody again and this time make some of the changes that Grieg makes.
• Play the melody 20 times like in Grieg’s piece. Each time you play the melody, change something. You are developing a musical idea.
• Next time you compose your own music, use some of these ways of changing an idea in your composition.