Musical tones have in fact a remarkable capacity for evoking things beyond music itself, whether feelings, states of mind, gestures, or physical phenomena, and in the Western classical music tradition creators have often delighted in reproducing experiences and phenomena of nature in tones. And theorists of music have argued that it, like the other arts, is in its essence an imitation of “nature,” if we take that to mean both the phenomena of the physical universe and of the human soul. Music is itself rooted in the facts of nature, in mathematical ratios and acoustical overtones.

Music and nature have formed a close symbiosis from the beginning. Here I have settled on cycles by Haydn, Roussel, and Delius. If we dig into the repertoire a bit, we find a handful of seasons cycles apart from Vivaldi’s perennial favorite.

While there have been countless classical pieces about a single season-spring music alone is almost a cliché-complete seasonal cycles are a rarity in the classical canon.

Vivaldi winter 2nd movement violin