Morning mood in the desert from Peer Gynt

 'Morning mood in the desert’ Edvard Grieg (Organteq)

Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Op 23 written 1875 as incidental music to Henrik Ibsen’s play of the same name.

The piece depicts the rising of the sun during act 4, scene 4, of Ibsen's play, which finds Peer Gynt stranded in the Moroccan desert after his companions took his yacht and abandoned him there while he slept. The scene begins with the following description: "Dawn. Acacias and palm trees. Peer [Gynt] is sitting in his tree using a wrenched-off branch to defend himself against a group of monkeys."

As the Peer Gynt suites take their pieces out of the original context of the play, "Morning Mood" is not widely known in its original setting, and images of Grieg’s Scandinavian origins more frequently spring to the minds of its listeners than those of the desert it was written to depict.

Best wishes,

Stig