Richard Aaker Trythall Richard Aaker Trythall Richard Aaker Trythall (born July 25, 1939) is an American and Italian composer and pianist of contemporary classical music. Trythall was born on July 25, 1939 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the younger brother of composer Gilbert Harry Trythall. His family, related to composer Edvard Grieg, has Welsh and Norwegian ancestry, and moved to the United States from Norway. He attended Central High School in Knoxville and in 1958 he enrolled at the University of Tennessee, where he studied under David Van Vactor graduating with a Bachelor of Music in 1961. His interest in composition was fostered by Van
Edvard Grieg up in a mountain surrounded by trolls. The music of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" represents the angry trolls taunting Peer and gets louder each time the theme repeats. The music ends with Peer escaping from the mountain. In an 1874 letter to his friend Frants Beyer, Grieg expressed his unhappiness with Dance of the Mountain King's Daughter, one of the movements he composed for "Peer Gynt", writing "I have also written something for the scene in the hall of the mountain King – something that I literally can't bear listening to because it absolutely reeks of cow-pies,