As we turn toward summer I always turn toward impressionism. The music that immediately comes to mind is the Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2 by Ravel.
There is something about the opening Sunrise that recalls waking up on a summer morning--waking up on a summer morning at an age when summer meant nothing to do but what the day brought.
The air coming through the open window is already warm and the sky is a pale, cloudless, blue. Maybe there is the faint sound of a lawnmower a few streets over.
You might eat some Lucky Charms for breakfast before riding your bike over to a friends house to ask is they could come out and play.
Daphnis et Chloe is not about waking up on a summer morning and your bike. Well, the suite does begin Daphnis waking up in front of the grotto of the nymphs. That’s not a bad place to wake up--or so I've heard.
Daphnis looks around for Chloe and finds her and then they perform a dance, this is a ballet, that relates a story about Pan and a nymph he was in love with.
I must admit I don’t care too much about the story. It comes to us from Greece but it is Second Century Greece so it’s a Romanized and somewhat Christianized Greece instead of the Greece of Antiquity.
I like indulging in a nostalgic summer memory instead of following the program that Ravel gave us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnvv89Nd2pg
As we turn toward summer I always turn toward impressionism. The music that immediately comes to mind is the Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2 by Ravel.
There is something about the opening Sunrise that recalls waking up on a summer morning--waking up on a summer morning at an age when summer meant nothing to do but what the day brought.
The air coming through the open window is already warm and the sky is a pale, cloudless, blue. Maybe there is the faint sound of a lawnmower a few streets over.
You might eat some Lucky Charms for breakfast before riding your bike over to a friends house to ask is they could come out and play.
Daphnis et Chloe is not about waking up on a summer morning and your bike. Well, the suite does begin Daphnis waking up in front of the grotto of the nymphs. That’s not a bad place to wake up--or so I've heard.
Daphnis looks around for Chloe and finds her and then they perform a dance, this is a ballet, that relates a story about Pan and a nymph he was in love with.
I must admit I don’t care too much about the story. It comes to us from Greece but it is Second Century Greece so it’s a Romanized and somewhat Christianized Greece instead of the Greece of Antiquity.
I like indulging in a nostalgic summer memory instead of following the program that Ravel gave us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnvv89Nd2pg