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In the past, the only way I have been able to deal with this time of year is to resign myself to the fact that the weather will be gross until about Halloween. This year I am going to lean into it. Should you doubt that the weather is indeed gross, please join me for a run around 9:30 am in Crown Point any Sunday. I believe you will agree that Phadeus has indeed lost control of the sun and is currently scorching the earth. It’s rough.

To help me embrace the sticky remnants of the San Diego summer, I’ve enlisted a few pieces of breezy music. The first of which is not that well known.

If there is a redeeming time of day during the dog days of summer, it is the evening. Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodály masterfully captures the essence of the balmy evenings with his composition Summer Evening. This piece is for small orchestra and was one of Kodály’s compositions as a student. The piece was not performed between his graduation in 1908 and 1930. None other than Arturo Toscanini convinced Kodály to re-orchestrate the piece. Toscanini conducted the premiere with the New York Philharmonic.

We go now from a summer evening to a summer night. Frederic Delius’s Summer Night on the River is a staple for those of us looking for relief from the oppressive Sol Invictus. As a young man in the 1880s, Delius was sent to manage an orange plantation in Florida. Surely this was a searing experience for the young man from Northern England. Delius soon returned to Europe and started a career as a full-time composer in Paris. Delius took with him African-American musical influences that played a role in his unique compositional style which also includes a heavy dose of French Impressionism.

English composer Frank Bridge composed his Summer after coming into contact with the music of Delius. This piece is free of the Floridian heat and more reminiscent of an English summer. The tone color is lush but cool and flowing.

The final piece of music is the epitome of these halcyon days. Claude Debussy was the master of French Impressionism and his Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun is one of the most famous pieces of music ever written. Debussy himself gives us a description of the scene.

“...There is a succession of scenes through which pass the desires and dreams of the faun in the heat of the afternoon. Then, tired of pursuing the timorous flight of nymphs and naiads, he succumbs to intoxicating sleep, in which he can finally realize his dreams of possession in universal Nature.”

When listening to this masterpiece it is impossible to not enjoy the heat.