Romantic sensibility (or if you’re in German-speaking countries, a Romantic Weltanschauung!) has a lot to do with the natural world in general, and with Spring in particular – the most popular of the seasons for musical inspiration. That idea of the world opening out after a hard winter, with love in the air, birds singing and when anything and everything is possible, has captivated artistic souls since time immemorial, but reached its apex in the Romantic era. Some composers take in the whole year: Tchaikovsky devoted a work to ‘The Seasons’, although it is actually a set of 12 pieces one for each month; so for our purposes, around March-May.
The creative impulse has always been linked to the environment and its beauty, from the avian character pieces of Baroque harpsichordists (Daquin’s Le Coucou for instance), to the Four Seasons of Vivaldi, the pastoral scenes of Renaissance madrigalists, the storms in Baroque opera… right the way through to the ‘bird-robots’ of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto.
While the idea of tempestuous winter storms appeals to composers (Liszt’s ‘Orage’ from Années de pèlerinage – Suisse, for example), and moonlight is scarcely less tempting (Debussy’s Clair de lune), the fresh possibilities of Spring and its symbols of rebirth, of cycles, of new love, growth, fertility and development have remained ever irresistible to artists and composers.
Maybe there is something geographical about this: those countries with the (Spring Music), an approximately 20-minute solo piano piece, the second of his cycle
