Morning Mood (Great Music)

MORNING MOOD (Grieg, Norwegian, 1867)

In 1867, the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen introduced his verse play Peer Gynt, based on a fairy tale. In it, the title character travels from Norway to North Africa; in Act IV, Scene 4, he's stranded in the Moroccan desert. Ibsen asked his countryman Edvard Grieg to compose about 90 minutes of music for the play; Grieg later extracted two suites of four pieces each. The first piece in the first suite is called in English "Morning Mood," but in Norwegian "Morning Mood in the Desert," and interprets the desert sunrise in music. (A stage direction has Peer "sitting in his tree using a wrenched-off branch to defend himself against a group of monkeys.")

• Countless cartoons since have used "Morning Mood" as Bugs Bunny or somebody awakens in the morning.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)