Four Norwegian Moods

Stravinsky wrote Four Norwegian Moods in Hollywood in 1942, using melodies from a collection of Norwegian folk music his wife had found in a Los Angeles bookshop; he intended them for a film about the German occupation of Norway, and the studio did not use them. He then assembled the material as a concert suite of four short movements — Intrada, Song, Wedding Dance, Cortège — and was careful to call them moods rather than arrangements, since he treats the tunes as raw material rather than quoting them intact. He conducted the first performance with the Boston Symphony on 13 January 1944.