Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites carry cultural codes for the complex and ironic relationship between human and monster. These codes were recognized by authors such as Lageröf, Lie, and Ibsen, and they enter intertextually into films like Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Fritz Lang uses Peer Gynt to represent a murderer in M, and after this film, the music takes on generically spooky connotations. The film Needful Things goes beyond coding for malevolence by taking advantage of the written-in acceleration of Peer Gynt (beginning it early and making it quite fast) and synchronizing the music with the onscreen action. Film scenes using Peer Gynt exemplify Nicholas Cook's categories of conformance and contest, which characterize the relationship between image and music (the elements are invertible or each medium deconstructs the other, respectively).

Works: D. W. Griffith (director) and Joseph Carl Breil (composer): Sound track to Birth of a Nation (74-75); Fritz Lang (director): Sound track to M (77-80); Dario Argento (director): Sound track to Demoni (81-82); Fraser Clarke Heston (director): Sound track to Needful Things (80-85); Jerry Zucker (director): Sound track to Rat Race (84-85).

Sources: Edvard Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite (74-87); Schubert: Ave Maria (82); Patrick Doyle: Dies irae (82).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Karen Anton Stafford