Not including the three separate songs in the complete incidental music for Ibsen’s
Peer Gynt, almost thirty songs by Grieg were published between the Op 5 set and the
Sex digte af Henrik Ibsen Op 25, published eleven years later in 1876. Among them was Grieg’s solitary song-setting from 1871,
Prinsessen, which tells of a lone Princess who hears the sound of a horn-call from outside the castle. She is puzzled by the strange reaction the sounds rouse in her. Perhaps naturally, Grieg’s setting utilizes an original but folk-like theme, subtly varied as the uncertainties of her dream-like reactions unfold.
from notes by Robert Matthew-Walker © 2008
;)
