Capturing seasons in music

[piston]

I am opening this new thread as a nice coat of virgin snow is finally covering the ground in Maine, the first significant snow fall this year! Numerous composers have sought to capture seasons, seasonal moods, and seasonal rhythms of life in music. Of course, Vivaldi's name is forever associated with such creative work. In addition to expressing our preferences, perhaps we could do a little in-house survey of what's available. Alexander Glazunov's The Seasons are noteworthy. The work begins with winter, a season which includes musical vignettes of frost, ice, hail, and snow. Spring, on the other hand, consists of a single "scene." His summer "scene" then yields to a waltz of the cornflowers and poppies, a barcarolle, variations and coda. Glazunov's The Seasons closes with autumn, my favorite movement, which includes its Bacchanale and Appearance of the Seasons, a gorgeous Adagio, and the concluding Apotheosis.

[Bogey]

I always enjoy Shostakovich's 11th Symphony on very cold wintery days.

[piston]

Two possible "seasons" in Shostakovich's 11th: early January 1905 or late-October-early-November 1956! Or, better yet, the same season: military repression.

[pizza]

Ives' "Holidays Symphony" suggests "the dismal, bleak, cold weather of a February night" as the composer describes it in "Washington’s Birthday". "The Fourth of July", "Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day" and "Decoration Day" are also magnificent examples of seasonal portrayal.

Tchaikovsky also wrote "The Seasons" or as some call it, "The Months" for piano solo, beautifully played by Ashkenazy and by Pletnev.

[Ralph]

Tschaikovsky's "Winter Dreams," of course.

[Bogey]

Two possible "seasons" in Shostakovich's 11th: early January 1905 or late-October-early-November 1956! Or, better yet, the same season: military repression.

I tend to picture January 1905, but this is probably due to the fact that this is what my London cd pictures. Where are you from in Maine Piston? I was born in Bangor and spent many summers in Veazie.

[piston]

Two possible "seasons" in Shostakovich's 11th: early January 1905 or late-October-early-November 1956! Or, better yet, the same season: military repression.

I tend to picture January 1905, but this is probably due to the fact that this is what my London cd pictures. Where are you from in Maine Piston? I was born in Bangor and spent many summers in Veazie.

First time I try the "quote" option. Let's hope it works! We're both from the same "neighborhood"; I live in O.T. Well, Bogey, you got me to put on Shostakovich's 11th this morning. The powerful second movement is under way. I very much enjoy the Rostropovich "life" performance in London (2002). Greater db extremes than on most other recordings but so much intensity. A much slower first movement as well. Great stuff! The fact that the symphony's composition coincides with the Hungarian uprising and its rapid repression, in 1956, has led Volkov, among others, to suggest that the work's reference to the 9th January 1905 uprising in Russia is a "cover" for the Hungarian bloodshed. cheers!

[Bogey]

Two possible "seasons" in Shostakovich's 11th: early January 1905 or late-October-early-November 1956! Or, better yet, the same season: military repression.

I tend to picture January 1905, but this is probably due to the fact that this is what my London cd pictures. Where are you from in Maine Piston? I was born in Bangor and spent many summers in Veazie.

First time I try the "quote" option. Let's hope it works! We're both from the same "neighborhood"; I live in O.T. Well, Bogey, you got me to put on Shostakovich's 11th this morning. The powerful second movement is under way. I very much enjoy the Rostropovich "life" performance in London (2002). Greater db extremes than on most other recordings but so much intensity. A much slower first movement as well. Great stuff! The fact that the symphony's composition coincides with the Hungarian uprising and its rapid repression, in 1956, has led Volkov, among others, to suggest that the work's reference to the 9th January 1905 uprising in Russia is a "cover" for the Hungarian bloodshed. cheers!

I did not know this last point. Thanks! I have the Haitink, but need to look into the Rostropovich as you are not the first to recommend it. Having two of this symphony (one of my favorites FWIW) cannot hurt.

[pizza]

Three recordings of the 11th that are essential for anyone who loves this symphony are Stokowski/Houston, DePreist/Helsinki and Polyanski/Russian State SO. Don't miss them!

[Febnyc]

The English composer Christopher Simpson (c1605-1669), I think, was the first to write music to evoke the seasons. His "The Seasons" was written in the style of a "division" or a playing upon a ground. This work consists of four fantasias each of which has three movements - instruments are two treble strings, a bass string instrument and a continuo. There is one recording I know of - on the Atma label. The continuo is an organ and there are three alto viols and one bass.

A beautifully-realized disc of "seasons" which predate Vivaldi's by almost 75 years.

[RebLem]

You want music for cold times, nobody has ever beat Vaughan Williams Sym 7 "Antarctica." The symphony is a reworking of material he composed for the 1948 British film Scott of the Antarctic (Halliwell gives it 2 stars), and a violinist friend of mine said he thought the film music was superior to the symphony. Somebody ought to record (or re-record) the film music.

[piston]

I really had all seasons, seasonal moods, and seasonal rhythms in mind, RebLem. My God! VW's seventh does not leave much room for the beauties of winter, does it? It's a fantastic work which I enjoy tremendously, a perfect illustration that "avant-garde" music does not have to mean an impenetrable work. But to equate Antartica to winter is not unlike associating the Sahara to summer.

[Joe Barron]

It's a short piece, but I've always found Debussy's "Footprints in the Snow" from Book I of the Preludes a marvelous invocation of cold weather. Indeed, it's one of the few programmatic pieces I know of in which the subject is discernable without the benefit of reading the title. It feels like ice, and late afternoon.

In a strange inversion, I've always thought of winter when listening to the second movement of Nielsen's Espansiva symphony. The notes I've read say it depicts high summer, but there's something distinctly chilly to me about the horn call in the beginning.

[gperkins151]

I always enjoy Shostakovich's 11th Symphony on very cold wintery days.

Yes Bogey!!

I like Mravinsky's, which I lovingly refer to as being a bone-chiller!!

[PJME]

But when it is time for Spring :

"Enter Spring" - by Frank Bridge !!!

[karlhenning]

It's a fantastic work which I enjoy tremendously, a perfect illustration that "avant-garde" music does not have to mean an impenetrable work.

Vaughan Williams, avant-garde? . . .

Cheers,
~Karl

[karlhenning]

In a strange inversion, I've always thought of winter when listening to the second movement of Nielsen's Espansiva symphony. The notes I've read say it depicts high summer, but there's something distinctly chilly to me about the horn call in the beginning.

Very interesting, Joe!

I wasn't aware that Nielsen had a particular season in mind there, but my ear, too, tends to hear warmth in that movement!

Cheers,
~Karl

[jbuck919]

A case could be made that western music only exists because of the temperate (read freezing cold winters) of Europe.

If one turns to the Gregorian Chant, it seems to me (and to others from whom I got this idea in the first place) particularly obvious that they made an even bigger deal out of Christmas than it might have warrented. There is only one proper, a masterpiece to be sure, for Easter Sunday, a spring festival. There are three, all of them gorgeous, the very epitome of Gregorian art, for Christmas (the Mass at midnight, the Mass at dawn, the Mass during the day, an ancient usage). I do rather have a feeling that if I were a monk in a monastery at the time of the Carolingian Renaissance I would have lived for that, even if I were freezing off the tips of my fingers and certain other body parts.