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.