Of Europe’s 750 million people, Norway claims only 5. Norway is the sticks, the boondocks, the land of country bumpkins.

Joking aside, it is relatively small and remote. It was even more so a century ago, before cars and the internet made the earth a lot smaller. So when Norwegian hero Edvard Grieg wrote magnificent music, he put this small country on the maps and in the minds of the rest of the continent. His compositions are flavored with Norwegian legends and mythology – this is the land of giants, trolls, gnomes, swords, spears, and Vikings. One of my favorite Halloweentide pieces is his March of the Trolls, which comes from a series of short character pieces he wrote for piano.

This piece is in trio form – ABA. There’s an opening section in which you can hear the excited little trolls running around, followed by a middle section where the trolls sit around and relax a spell; the piece ends with an exact repeat of the first section.

 

I recently stumbled across a friend’s performance on youtube, and immediately though “wow, this is great – time to put this on the blog!” Any Art Music video (that isn’t designed to be click bait) with over 20,000 views is quite an accomplishment.

Now it’s common knowledge that if you want to lose your faith in humanity, all you need to do is read through the comments on any youtube video, news feed, or basically anything on reddit. Unfortunately, and against my better judgment, I scrolled down and found that many of the comments were complaints about my friend’s facial expressions – not the music. Here was a flawless performance with good sound & video quality, offered for FREE to anyone, anytime – but clearly, this generous offering of beautiful music at no cost isn’t as important as making the right facial expression.

The world is full of Philistines and Trolls. We’re all told to ignore the Philistines and not feed the Trolls, but their words still can hurt – and some of us are unable to forget cruel words, regardless of the circumstances under which they were said or written. So as a public service message to all, please think before you speak or write, and remember that beauty is a thing that needs to be protected and defended. And DON’T FEED THE TROLLS!