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There is perhaps no better medium than music to characterize the visceral experience of a storm, the capriciousness of a blossom, the sweltering of a summer day, or the potential energy of an icicle. The 17th century saw a great outpouring of "programmatic" music--utilizing techniques like onomatopoeia, story line, text painting, pastoral motifs, and dance forms--and the 18th century saw this tradition continue and evolve as part of a continuum. Vivaldi's famous Le Quattro Stagioni, which forms the first four concertos in his Op. 8 collection, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (1723), is just one example--albeit, by far the most well known--in a long tradition of season or weather inspired "program music." Each of Vivaldi's concerto movements in Le Quattro Stagioni has an associated sonnet--likely written by the composer, himself, and embedded into the parts--that describes a typical scene from the relevant season. L'inverno (Op. 8, no. 4) has an abundance of ice and rain, a warm interlude by the fire, and a windy conclusion. The music stops and starts, and takes the violin all over the map. There is even a brief moment of recalling the main "sweltering" motif from Summer, before the winds pick up and we're plunged back into Winter. The concerto immediately following in the collection, La Tempesta di Mare (Op. 8, no. 5), depicts a sea storm wherein Vivaldi similarly uses vivid compositional devices and acrobatic technique to capture the essence of a turbulent tempest on the water. But, with no sonnet, he leaves the story-line up to the listener. One earlier English setting of "The Seasons" comes to us from an unpublished manuscript by Christopher Simpson, and is scored for treble and two bass viols. Simpson's take is much more abstract. Without knowledge of the theme, you likely wouldn't guess it, and the listener is left to garner his or her own interpretation. On the other hand, Simpson's slightly younger contemporary, Matthew Locke, was writing for the stage--a revival production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, to be specific--when he composed the incidental music found on this disc. His writing style is evocative, but intended to fit into the context of an already complete dramatic production, rather than telling a narrative itself. In this sense, it is one step more abstract than Vivaldi's Tempesta di mare. Writing nearly a hundred years later, Scotland's most famous 18th century classical composer, James Oswald captured in music various local species of flowers or trees, and organized them by their associated season into two sets of Airs for the Seasons. Each piece is like a still life of a flower or a tree, its essence distilled into a one page tune. Each season comprises 12 airs, so that in total there are 96 pieces in the two sets. The writing is sweet and nostalgic, and frequently breaks into pure fiddle playing.

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