To celebrate the first full day of Autumn (the season officially began yesterday at 5:43 a.m. in the Pacific time zone), we’ll devote today’s entire 2pm hour to musical depictions of the season. Listen in and you’ll hear from Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Amy Beach and, for today’s Midday Masterpiece starting the hour, the half hour-plus “Autumn” from Haydn’s secular cantata “The Seasons.”
This is how “Autumn” is described on
Wikipedia:
The words at first are about hard work and the rewards for hard work (Haydn thought these were strange words to set to music). Then there is a duet for a loving young couple (Lucas and Hanne). This is the only time that the soloists feel like real characters in a story and talk to one another. Autumn is the hunting season, so there is hunting music. It sounds quite old-fashioned (like Baroque music). The bassoon is the hound (the dog). The hounds become hungry and the music gets faster and faster until, suddenly, the dogs and the music stop. There is a gunshot (timpani) as the deer is shot. Autumn finishes with a drinking chorus.
