SpringTime

Today is Saturday, March 23rd and heavy rain is predicted for the northeast through tomorrow. So far, the forecast has been spot on. The good news is that today is the second full day of spring And as a musician and gardener it is fascinating to me the number of composers over the centuries who have drawn inspiration from springtime. There’s Beethoven’s Spring Sonata for violin and piano, Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 (The Spring Symphony), Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony, and in Schubert’s tragically brief life of 31 years, many of his six hundred songs are about springtime. Im Frühling’s, D.882, based on the poem by Ernst Schulze, is about the blissful memory of lost springtime love:

“I am sitting quietly on the hillside,

The sky is so clear,

The breezes are playing in the green valley,

Where, with the first ray of spring sunshine, I

Was once, alas, so happy;

Where I walked by her side

So intimate and so close,

And deep in the dark spring amongst the rocks

I saw the beautiful sky, blue and bright,

And I saw her in the heavens.

Notice how the colourful springtime is already

Looking out of the buds and blossoms!

Not all the blossoms are the same to me,

I would prefer to pluck from the branch

From which she plucked.”

How beautiful, how romantic!

And for those who prefer something more contemporary, there’s George Harrison’s, “Here Comes the Sun”, about the arrival of spring after “a long, cold, lonely winter.” When Harrison sings about the “ice slowly melting” and “the smiles returning to their faces”, it always warms my heart and puts a smile on my face.

As of August 2021 “Here Comes the Sun” was the band’s most streamed song on Spotify with more than seven hundred million views. In May 2023, it became the first Beatles song to surpass one billion plays on the platform.

Another great, upbeat song about Spring is the well known 1946 song, “You Make Me Feel So Young.” As usual, no one does it better than the “chairman of the board,” Frank Sinatra:

“You make me feel so young,

You make me feel so Spring has sprung

And every time I see you grin

I’m such a happy individual

You and I

are just like a couple of tots

Running across the meadow

Pickin’ up lots of forget-me-nots”

I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize spring pollen sufferers who simply can’t tolerate pollen from certain trees, grasses, and weeds. This reaction is awful, and while it is usually not caused by flowers, they definitely can be a trigger.

The song “Fly me to the Moon” by Count Basie and Sinatra may offer a glimmer of hope:

“Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars, let me see what Spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.”

Elon Musk may be able to help in this situation.

The two daffodils I placed on my keyboard this morning are King Alfred daffodils. They are part of the genus Narcissus which has more than fifty different varieties. These golden yellow “daffs” have large central trumpets and carry six petals per stem. They have the rich fragrance and golden color of freshly churned butter. The name Narcissus comes from Greek mythology and refers to a young man who knelt by a pool of water and fell in love with his own reflection. Unable to move from that spot, he was turned into a narcissus or daffodil which remained there forevermore.

A final thought: yesterday when Princess Kate sat on a wooden bench and spoke into the camera to reveal her cancer diagnosis, she was surrounded by daffodils, the national flower of Wales. I pray that Kate and all those dealing with a cancer diagnosis be uplifted and soothed by beautiful flowers and music.