Spring - as Smorg Hears It

(Click on name of songs for sample clip at Youtube)
So, back in the 90's (while I was still a Missouri country pumpkin) I was very proudly entrenched in the melodic music of the Romantic period. Not having been very familiar with the music of one Igor Stravinsky before, I naively walked into the hall expecting a tuneful evening at the symphony...

Yes, tuneful expectation at a concert of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring... I did say that I was naive, right?

Well, the first minute and a half or so of it with the bassoon soloing was promising enough. Lilting and tuneful with exotic coloring... it sort of reminded me of the gray Russian forest and of Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov... strolling in the stuffily cool woods. A coherent if rather sleepy tableau.

But then the other winds took over at irregular meter,clashing heartily with the strings' erratic cadence, and all of the sudden the auditorium's walls seemed to move, rustling like old leaves getting pushed out of the way by restless new ones. It was decidedly uncomfortable... like being caught in this building that had literally came to life (a most ungracious behavior for an old brick buildings especially in the middle of a Midwestern tornadic season). I wondered if the seat I was sitting in wouldn't start sprouting up vines that would try to incorporate me into its green torso the way the Old Man Willow does Merry and Pippin in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

The grayness gave way to the green in its various different shades and invasive zest. Spring was rushing in and I was really out of place. I shouldn't be there! The forest was gonna swallow up me whole in the midst of its chaotic acoustic metamorphosis. If I didn't bolt out the door now this could really be the end of my years of walking free. How monstrously claustrophobic the auditorium seemed! I had tried my hands at gardening before but no plant has ever grown so fast no matter how often I pruned it. I don't care that Stravinsky was obviously a genius. If I ever meet the man in some dream of an after life I'll be sure to throw a rotten log at him in retaliation for this musical ambush!

Looking back on it now, though I'm still nowhere near crazy about Stravinsky's and the modern classical music, I'm glad he composed this thing. If a blind man should ever ask me to describe what spring in the Urals is like, I'll just have him listen to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Nothing I could ever penned would be as descriptive.

Which... is a far cry from what I could say of the first time I heard Franz Schubert's Im Frühling. What a soothing little early Romantic period song that is! Just a piano accompanying a voice. A sung narration of a nature observer who endlessly admires everything about this time of year. You don't really get to see what the he is recalling, but if he is a good singing narrator (like Ian Bostridge is in this sample clip), he can persuade you to believe in his vision that the grass is indeed greener and the flowers more aromatic on this side of summer.... just by the manner of his telling it (even if skeptical you do wonder if anything in life can be that idealic).

Another favorite spring song of many fans of classical singing is Richard Strauss' Frühling. With Strauss, we are now listening to something from the late Romantic period with the telltale large and sumptuously colorful orchestra for the soprano to play with. Unlike the Schubert number, we are not listening to a singing narrator, but the very tempestuous voice of Spring herself... Turbulent and beautiful, her time has come and every remnant of winter scatters in her wake. Birds sing at her command, flowers bloom with her consent. No more snow is to reach the ground while this lady is having her dance - only soft, life-giving rain is allowed to touch her youthful face.

Three different songs from different eras addressing the same topic, spring. What's so cool about listening to them one after the other, though, is how you get to see the season from three different perspectives. Schubert tells you elegantly about it, Strauss gives voice to it, and Stravinsky practically recreates it. And it leaves me wondering... how else can you tell about spring in a song?