Edvard Grieg is the most important Norwegian composer of the later 19th century, a period of growing national consciousness. As a child, he was encouraged by the violinist Ole Bull, a friend of his parents, and studied at the Leipzig Conservatory on his suggestion. After a period at home in Norway he moved to Copenhagen and it was there that he met the young composer Rikard Nordraak, an enthusiastic champion of Norwegian music and a decisive influence on him. Grieg's own performances of Norwegian music, often with his wife, the singer Nina Hagerup, established him as a leading figure in the music of his own country, bringing subsequent collaboration in the theatre with Bjørnson and with Ibsen. He continued to divide his time between composition and activity in the concert-hall until his death in 1907. 

 Grieg collaborated with the dramatist Bjørnson in the play Sigurd Jorsalfar, for which he provided incidental music, and still more notably with Ibsen in Peer Gynt. The original music for the latter makes use of solo voices, chorus and orchestra, but is most often heard in orchestral form in the two suites arranged by the composer. These include Morning, Aase's Death, Anitra's Dance and In the Hall of the Mountain King in the first suite, and Ceremonial March, Arabian Dance, Peer Gynt's Homecoming and Solveig's Song in the second, the order not corresponding to the sequence of events in Ibsen's remarkable play.