Discovering an unknown work by a composer is always an exciting event. Finding one from a figure like Carl Ruggles, with only eight published pieces to his name, is doubly so. In the 1960s, Kirkpatrick was sorting through Ruggles's early manuscripts when he discovered sketches for a work for violin and piano titled Mood. This material was commingled with Ruggles's voluminous studies for his abandoned opera, The Sunken Bell. Over time, Kirkpatrick prepared an edition of Mood, which he performed with violinist Daniel Stepner. Kirkpatrick was worried that Ruggles would destroy Mood if he were reminded about the work, and as a result kept his work a secret from the composer. By the time Kirkpatrick was ready to share his work, Ruggles had long since passed away.

Mood occupies a special place in Ruggles's output for a variety of reasons. It was Ruggles's only work for violin, his own instrument. Although Kirkpatrick prepared editions of other incomplete works by Ruggles (including Symphonia Dialecta/Affirmations, the Largo Expressivo from Portals, the songs “Windy Nights” and “The Prayer,” March, Visions, Parvum Organum, Valse Lente, and Four Untitled Piano Pieces), Mood was the only one he spent significant time trying to publish. Kirkpatrick offered a “conjectural date” of 1918, “based on the way these sketches seem to antedate the bits of The Sunken Bell, on which Ruggles was still working in 1923—also on his saying that Toys (1919) was his earliest acknowledged music.”