Midsummer is celebrated various ways by various cultures on various dates throughout the week after the Summer Solstice. This is good news for my blog, because, not surprisingly, this mystical, magical, and religiously important time of year has a lot of significant music written about it.

Before Cheech & Chong, the best acid trip entertainment was undoubtedly Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gods, goddesses, fairies, and magic potions, there is even a character named Bottom who gets turned into an ass; now that’s top-quality play-writing! Felix Mendelssohn, like many other composers, wrote incidental music for this play. Here is the rollicking scherzo from the suite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksLWUBXHQ8w

… they STEAL.

Frédéric Chopin had a pretty kickin’ idea when he wrote his nocturnes for solo piano. They are perfect – intimate, romantic, dreamy. Well, when Chopin kicked the bucket in 1849, Franz Liszt took his idea and ran with it. The guy wasn’t even cold in his grave, and already Liszt was penning a shameless copy of his style.