Okay, so it's going to snow tonight, but it's still spring break, which led me to think about the concept of spring in music...
In 1725, Antonio Vivaldi published a series of violin concertos (violin solos with orchestral accompaniment) called The Four Seasons, of which "Spring" is very well known. We use a snippet of it in Music Theory class when we practice analyzing the elements of music:
Several jazz standards have the title spring: "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," "Up Jumped Spring," "It Might as Well Be Spring," and my personal favorite, "Joy Spring" by Clifford Brown:
A classic Pat Metheny tune from the 1970s is titled "April Joy."
One of the pieces we played in Disney was Chen Yi's Spring Festival, a combination of traditional Chinese folksong and modern western classical music.
Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky's famous "primitivist" ballet about virgin sacrifice in ancient pagan Russia, caused a riot at its premiere in Paris in 1913:
In pop music, you can listen to music by Buffalo Springfield and Rick Springfield. Or, you can go straight to The Boss, Bruce Springsteen:
Happy Spring Break!
No comments:
Post a Comment