Staying on the theme of Spring (we’ll be here for a while) …

I don’t need to tell you that Spring is more than just a change of season – it’s a rebirth after death, warmth after cold, light after darkness.

It can also be so much more complex than that. Edvard Grieg‘s work, “Last Spring”, was inspired by the poetry of Aasmund Olavsson Vinje. The title sounds like the work will be a nostalgic daydream … however, the word “last” in this case refers not to the previous year, but the sense that this will be the poet’s final spring on earth. Bittersweet indeed.

Like many of Grieg’s most famous works, it was originally written for piano, and later arranged it for orchestra (in this case, just strings) by the composer.

… I wonders where the flowers is?

The change of seasons is a magical time. We humans are completely obsessed with it, and love to draw comparisons between the earth’s seasons and the seasons of our own lives. It should be no surprise, then, that there are tons of musical compositions celebrating Spring – way more than good old Vivaldi.

Here is a short movement from “The Seasons”, a ballet by Russian composer Alexander Glazunov. Born into a wealthy family in imperial times, Glazunov’s politics and style of music went out of fashion after the 1917 revolution. Glazunov loved his country, though, and stayed in Russia for another decade, to ensure that the St. Petersburg Conservatory (arguably the most important music school in Russia) didn’t collapse amid the turmoil. He eventually settled in Paris.

The video ends abruptly. The music wasn’t written to be segmented – if you listen to the whole ballet, Spring flows seamlessly into Summer.

I guess I have to post the quintessential spring piece.

Antonio Vivaldi wrote a massive amount of music. Musicians tell a joke about him: did he write more than 500 concertos? No, he just wrote the same concerto 500 times. It all sounds similar, but that doesn’t make it dull – quite the contrary actually. If it weren’t good, it wouldn’t have survived 300 years!

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are actually four violin concertos. The idea of attaching a non-musical idea (in this case, the seasons of the year) to a composition was fairly unique for the time. It was a wise move on Vivaldi’s part, because now this group of concertos are his most played work. Each concerto uses music to paint the sights, sounds, and smells of each season (Winter is a chilling storm!) To our modern ears and minds, this is a no-brainer – but in 1700, it was a little more cutting-edge. Eventually this idea (attaching a non-musical idea to a piece of music) became known as programmatic music, and is almost expected of any modern composition.