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

And so here is your obligatory summer piece, titled (what else) “Summer”, by Antonio Vivaldi.

Vivaldi wrote 500 concertos, though musicians will say that he actually wrote the same concerto 500 times. Most of these concertos are given really interesting titles – for example, “Violin Concerto in D” or “Violin Concerto in E” or maybe even “Violin Concerto in F.” In a sea of compositions with very similar names, four of his concertos stand out above the rest (not surprisingly) because they bear a title that suggests something extra-musical. The Four Seasons (having nothing to do with Franki Valli) are four Baroque concertos that musically capture the spirit of the respective times of year – Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. This sort of use of extra-musical influences is known as Program Music, and is commonplace nowadays. If a composer today wrote a piece called “A Cold Winter’s Day” or “The Ice Storm”, we wouldn’t think twice about it; in fact, we would probably begin making assumptions as to how the piece would sound, built on the musical ideas handed down through generations of wintery composers. But in 1720, for Vivaldi to write a Concerto that captures the spirit of summer AND to title it “Summer” was out of the ordinary.

There are certain melodic ideas that come up over and over again throughout the history of music.  My choir members know I am famous for finding the first four notes of “How Dry I Am” in practically every piece ever written. There’s a reason for this – the shape of this phrase is beauty itself. A leap of a fourth, going from a weak beat to a stronger beat, gives the impression of suddenly turning one’s head to pay attention. Then, a simple three-note rising scale continues to lift the head – making us feel taller, alert, and engaged with the world. A bit of a stretch? Perhaps. But I believe there is something deep here that evokes a universal (or at least nearly universal) response in every human.

Another universally loved musical gesture is the melodic shape found in “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Here, the melody rises a fifth (creating tension), then gentle falls back down to the starting note by gradually descending. The effect? We start from a place of bored contentment. Then, we ascend to a high note – there is tension and excitement in our lives! What will happen? Well, one note at a time, we relax until we have returned to our starting place. However – we are no longer bored, because we have just had a thrilling journey! A bit of a stretch? Perhaps. But maybe this overly-simple example can give us an idea of what makes great pieces of music, well, great.

Here is a movement from “My Homeland” by Bedřich Smetana, a gorgeous musical painting of a Czech river, Vltava. You can hear the little rushing brooks, eventually flowing into a wide expanse of water. The melody, though, is the same as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, only beginning in a minor key, and triumphantly ending in major.