If Ever There Were a Spring Day So Perfect . . . —5&1 Classical Playlist #37

by Mark Meynell

Note: This post is part of Mark Meynell's 5&1 series on classical music. Taking a different theme for each post, the 5&1 series offers five short pieces followed by one more substantial work. Occasionally, playlist choices are not on YouTube, so alternatives are provided here.

To listen to the playlist for this post, follow these links to Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube.

Billy Collins, former US poet laureate, captured the joy at spring’s arrival perfectly in his poem Today. With beaming concision, he lists his garden’s wonders that make him want to “throw / open all the windows in the house” and even liberate the organism encased in his glass paperweight with a hammer.

If ever there were a spring day so perfect so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze  . . . well, today is just that kind of day.

For those of us in the northern hemisphere who have endured the gray gloom and dank drizzle of the winter months, relief is coming at last (in the south, you’ve only got six months to wait). I cannot tell you how much this time of year means to me.

It’s not simply with words that such joys may be expressed, thank goodness. We have centuries of music as well.

1. Til våren / To Spring (No. 6, Lyric Pieces III, Op. 43)

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907, Norwegian)

Denis Kozhukin (piano)

We start gently, with a wistful but gorgeous piano piece that builds in intensity and complexity from its simple, delightful opening. Grieg wrote well over 60 of these s0-called “lyric pieces” during his lifetime, and this is one of the loveliest. It’s achingly brief, and before you know it, he’s moved on. But whether it’s written in anticipation of spring while deep in the Norwegian winter, or as the first buds of life emerge from the ground, it is a perfect way to get into the mood.

2. Violin Sonata No. 5 in F “Spring”: I. Allegro (Op. 24)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827, German)

Isabelle Faust (violin), Alexander Melnikov (piano)

We’ll add another instrument now, the violin. Beethoven wrote several sonatas. Technically speaking, a sonata is a musical form with particular convention; it would usually incorporate two musical ideas (or melodies) in an A-B-A structure, in the piece’s first movement. That is what we have here. Having been trained as both a pianist and violinist himself, his violin sonatas give the piano accompaniment as many interesting things to do as the soloist (whereas earlier composers often left the accompanist with the most basic part).

Beethoven wrote this sonata at the age of 31, after nearly ten years living in Vienna (far from his native Bonn, in Germany). It was in fact only given the name “Spring” posthumously. But it is well-named. It has both a beautiful lyricism on the violin and an exuberant joy in both performers.

3. It Was a Lover and His Lass (from Let Us Garlands Bring, Op. 18)

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956, English)

Roderick Williams (baritone), Iain Burnside (piano)

Now we add voice and text, and not just any text. This is the fifth of five settings of Shakespeare songs by Gerald Finzi, premiered at one of the bleakest moments of the Second World War (in 1942), dedicated to Ralph Vaughan Williams on his 70th birthday.

This song is taken from As You Like It (Act V, Scene 3), and is sung towards the conclusion of a play all about the vicissitudes of love and relationships. So in context, it gives all kinds of winks and nods to the audience that you won’t pick up as a stand-alone. But Finzi perfectly evokes the mood of fun, frolics, and silliness. After all, it’s quite hard to take someone singing “with a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no” all that seriously! But spring is like that! So each verse ends with this refrain:

In springtime, the only pretty ⌜ring⌝ time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding. Sweet lovers love the spring.

4. The Pines of Rome: 1. Villa Borghese (P. 141, 1924)

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936, Italian)

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa (cond.)

Time to ramp it up now. Full orchestra from here on out, at first with the great Italian Respighi. He wrote three “tone poems” depicting aspects of his beloved home city of Rome: The Fountains of Rome (1916), The Pines of Rome (1924), and The Festivals of Rome (1928). In The Pines, each of the four movements evokes a place where pine trees grow. The Villa Borghese was owned by one of the city’s most powerful families, but Respighi focuses on a group of children singing and playing there.

Perhaps it’s the relief of being able to play outside at last, after the claustrophobia of being cooped up all winter. But these kids are bursting with energy; you can hear them pretending to be marching soldiers one moment, dancing and singing nursery rhymes at another. Joy!

5. Symphony No. 1 in B flat “Spring”: IV. Allegro animato e grazioso (Op. 38)

Robert Schumann (1810-1856, German)

Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, François-Xavier Roth (cond.)

Schumann was a composer with a big heart and deep feeling. He wears it all on his sleeve and lays it all out in the score. The Spring Symphony was his first completed attempt at writing a symphony (an achievement often regarded as the Mount Everest of a composer’s abilities). Initially each movement was given a nickname, but he withdrew these on publication. However, he did write this to a friend:

Could you breathe a little of the longing for spring into your orchestra as they play? That was what was most in my mind when I wrote [the symphony] in January 1841. I should like the very first trumpet entrance to sound as if it came from on high, like a summons to awakening. Further on in the introduction, I would like the music to suggest the world’s turning green, perhaps with a butterfly hovering in the air, and then, in the Allegro, to show how everything to do with spring is coming alive . . . These, however, are ideas that came into my mind only after I had completed the piece.

Whether he thought of that after the fact or not, it certainly fits with what we hear. Unless that is just the result of suggestion . . . ! You decide!

OK, are you ready for this? We turn now to a piece that is no less seasonal than the rest of the list, but one that sparked revolutions in music and a riot at its premiere in Paris in 1913 (literally). The first audience was appalled by its ghastliness, because of its discordant cacophony and pagan horror show. But it is nonetheless, a true masterpiece that every composer worth their salt since has had to reckon with.

The Rite of Spring (1913)

Igor Stravinksy (1882-1971, Russian/American)

Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen (cond.)

This is spring, but not as we expect it. Stravinsky’s third commission for Diaghilev’s famous Ballets Russes in Paris was choreographed by Nijinsky and premiered on the eve of the First World War in 1913. In hindsight, it feels prophetic of the barbarism about to envelop the world.

We are transported through the mists of deep time, to somewhere in the heart of pagan Russia, long before the arrival of Christianity. People gather to worship the spring, following ancient beliefs about what is required to ensure the successful burgeoning of life (which of course then culminates in a bountiful harvest in the autumn). The rituals follow agreed patterns, which reach their peak with one young girl dancing herself into such a frenzy that she dies as a propitiating sacrifice to the spring god. This is certainly not a happy tale (and for the Christian, a healthy reminder of what the Good Friday and Easter Gospel rescues us from). The music conveys all that, using massive discords, unsettling but invigorating rhythms, and a musical frenzy that overwhelms orchestra and dancers alike. The first audience had never heard anything as percussive and ruthlessly insistent before.

There are two parts: I. Adoration of the Earth (in seven sections) and II. The Sacrifice (in six). You can find more details, but one fun exercise as you listen is to spot the different composers who have been shaped by (and even brazenly stolen from) The Rite of Spring. Yes, I’m looking at you, John Williams, in particular! See how many of his (and others’s) film scores can be heard in embryo during the 35 minutes of Stravinsky’s masterpiece.

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Mark Meynell is a writer, pastor, and teacher based in the UK, and he's been involved with the Rabbit Room since 2017. He has been involved in cross-cultural training for the last 25 years and is passionate about integrating life, theology, and the arts. He blogs at markmeynell.net.

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