Feeble and ailing, Grieg produced little in his final years aside from these seven mood pieces for piano. For the set, he dipped into sketches going back as far as 1867, but he did all the real work on the pieces in the early years of the twentieth century. Grieg intended to produce a suite of items larger in scale than his popular Lyric Pieces, but although his tone here is more serious, in truth these constitute only a minor enlargement of scope. Grieg was an expert miniaturist and folklorist and he put both strengths to use in this suite, nearly his swan song. The nostalgic first movement, "Resignation," expresses longing for his Danish friend and fellow composer Julius Röntgen. It's a very brief piece, with a slightly agitated section in the middle. "Scherzo-Impromptu" is a playful piece hinting at Grieg's Norwegian style; it's basically monothematic, but contrasting treatments of the theme (including a thoughtful passage near the end) give it an episodic quality. "A Ride at Night" is the most substantial item in the set, a nearly five-minute tone poem for piano lacking a specific program, but initially evoking such terrifying nocturnal equestrian excursions as Liszt's Mazeppa and Sibelius' Night Ride & Sunrise. At least that's true of the fast outer sections, with their sinister harmonic touches; the middle is an incongruously innocent respite, as if the horse had paused for a snack in a moonlit meadow. The flowing, pastoral "Folk Melody" borrows a ram's horn tune from the Valdres district, which Grieg found in L.M. Lindeman's collection of folk songs. The fifth movement, "Study (Homage to Chopin)," is a virtuosic interlude that had its origins in Grieg's 1867 sketches for his first set of Lyric Pieces. "Students' Serenade" employs singsong melodies tucked amid dark introductory and bridge material that sounds strangely ominous. The concluding "Mountaineer's Song" is a nationalist piece, modal and haunting, evoking Norway's rugged landscape with wandering melodies and unsettled harmonies.

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