March of the Trolls, Op. 54 No. 3, by Grieg
Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep. Open it in the browser and it plays, at whatever tempo you can read it.
Get the practice plan for March of the Trolls, Op. 54 No. 3
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (25 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 2 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in D minor. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: Dm, E7, Gm and Dsus2. Play each one as a block in your left hand and say its name, so you know what the harmony is before the left hand has to move.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 25 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (38 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (about 8 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
From Grieg's fifth book of Lyric Pieces, Op. 54, published in 1891. The trolls creep in pianissimo over a drone of bare fifths in the bass, build to fortissimo outbursts, and a gentler middle section in D major offers a moment of calm before they return.
How to play it
Practise the fast staccato runs in small groups and keep them very quiet at first; the effect depends on the huge contrast between pp and ff.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
Edition: Mutopia Project #2014, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Grieg sheet music
Who Grieg was
Norwegian composer who became, more than anyone else, the voice of Norwegian music on the world stage, at a time when Norway itself was pushing for a national identity apart from Denmark and Sweden. His Piano Concerto in A minor, written when he was just twenty-four, remains one of the most beloved concertos in the repertoire; the incidental music he wrote for Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, including "Morning Mood" and "In the Hall of the Mountain King," is some of the most recognizable music ever composed. Away from the big commissions, his ten books of Lyric Pieces for solo piano, small, folk-inflected miniatures written across his whole career, work almost like a musical diary.
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including D minor.