Celebrating the seasons . . .
From the beginning of time, the seasons have ruled our lives - how we dress, how we live, how we plan; even how or what we eat, where we live. The moon, the sun, the stars - how near or how far our planet is from them - have dictated our very existence, not to mention our calendars. Only consider that the Jewish calendar has just celebrated its 5758th new year - in close proximity to the autumnal equinox. A majority of the modern world celebrates the New Year approximately 10 days after the solstice of winter.
Equinox is either of the two times during the year when the sun crosses the celestial equator and the length of day and night are approximately equal. The autumnal equinox is September 22, and the vernal equinox is March 22. Solstice, on the other hand, is either of the two times during a year when the sun reaches an extreme of its northward or southward motion. The summer solstice - June 21 - is when the days are the longest, while December 21 in winter is when the days are shortest.
Words are no exception to this pull - neither is music.
Because of the recent autumn events, I went looking for an appropriate quote to begin this column, and was astonished by the results. John Bartlett (1820-1905) came up with the brilliant idea to arrange familiar quotations ("passages, phrases and proverbs traced to their sources") by topic, and his name has entered the lexicon as an everyday name.
"Now is the winter of our discontent . . . " is perhaps the most famous of the 'winter' quotes, from Shakespeare's Richard III. It is one of 25 matches for that word.
Not so surprising, perhaps is ". . . In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Alfred, Lord Tennyson is the author of this famous phrase, one of 54 matches found while searching for "spring."
"Sumer is icumen in . . ." - conjures up all sorts of wonderful images, but not the name of the originator of the saying, although there were 35 others I might have chosen.
Ah, and then there is poor autumn, abandoned by the poets and bards, with a minuscule 8 references in the venerable Bartlett's collection, and not one of them an everyday type of phrase.
Music, however, has had a different vision of the way our planet spins. Antonio Vivaldi
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