It’s that time of year, when I love to putter about in my garden, which somehow feels simpatico with the creativity of composing music. As a matter of fact, a number of great composers have loved nature’s flora and have responded to it with music. It would be lovely to explore some flower-inspired compositions, but we should first look at the soil in which they grow: the composers’ working methods.
When you think about it, it’s rather remarkable that flowers can somehow translate into music. To paint a picture of flowers is one thing, but it’s quite another to transform them into the entirely different medium of sound. Flowers must enter the eyes and nose of the composer and, by some alchemy, come out as lovely music, with all the delicacy and grace of pink petals. Some composers seem to possess the transformative ability Frances Hodgson Burnett wished for in “The Secret Garden”: “I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us.”
Out in Nature
How does this metamorphosis happen? If there is a formula, it’s this: Composers of the music of nature are often the composers who immerse themselves physically in it. To cite just a few examples, Beethoven was well known for his daily walks in the Vienna Woods. There, he sketched much of his sixth symphony in the period leading up to its completion in 1808 and personally titled it, “Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life.”In an 1810 letter, Beethoven wrote: “How delighted I will be to ramble for a while through the bushes, woods, under trees, through grass, and around rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo that man desires to hear.”
Here Beethoven has coined a useful word for how the transformation happens: “echo.” If a composer shouts “nature” from the top of a cliff and listens very closely, perhaps music is the echo that answers.
The composer who so exquisitely captured the Norwegian landscape, Edvard Grieg, couldn’t write a note in the city. He said he could only compose in the beautiful haven of his country getaway, Troldhaugen (“Troll Hill”) in Bergen, Norway, where he had a tiny composing hut that you can visit today.
Gustav Mahler had two similar composing huts in Austria, both of which are also museums now: one in the country near Carinthia by the lake in Maiernigg and one in Steinbach at Lake Attersee. With barely enough room for a piano and a desk and a chair inside—plus a window with a view—he could focus on nature and on composing without distraction.
A Spring Bouquet of Musical Roses
Let’s soothe our spirits and take time to stop and hear the roses. I have picked this bouquet of the most fragrant musical blossoms for you:One of those defiantly traditional English composers of the 20th century was Herbert Howells (1892–1983), best known for his gorgeous church music, including this a cappella choral motet.
The original text to “A Spotless Rose” was the German “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen,” usually translated “Lo how a rose e’er blooming.” It received a different English translation from the English hymn-writer Catherine Winkworth. Howell wrote this musical setting of Winkworth’s translation in 1919. It’s a Marian text, beginning: “A spotless rose is blowing/ Sprung from a tender root/ Of ancient seers foreshowing/ Of Jesse promised fruit.”
“I wrote it and dedicated it to my mother—it always moves me when I hear it, just as if it were written by someone else,” Howells said.
The roses of Isfahan in their mossy sheaths, The jasmines of Mosul, the orange blossom Have a fragrance less fresh and a scent less sweet, O pale Leilah, than your soft breath!
This sweet lullaby-style piece, originally for solo piano, was the first piece of the composer’s “Ten Woodland Sketches,” Op. 51, written in 1896. McDowell had a special love for roses, and when he died he was buried under a boulder surrounded by rose bushes. Later, a vocal version of the piece was created with lyrics by Helen Jane Long, which is sometimes heard in vocal recitals. As a pop instrumental, it was even recorded by Nat King Cole.
Among more than 500 waltzes and dances by the “Waltz King” who gave us “The Beautiful Blue Danube,” this lyrical waltz ranks in the top tier and is still regularly performed in Vienna. The “South” in the title alludes to Strauss’s operetta from which the Waltz’s tunes were taken, “The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief,” with a story derived from Cervantes and set in Portugal.
This charming song by Schubert—composed for a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1789—tells the story of a young man’s unrequited love of a girl who is personified as a little rose in the field. He wants to pick the rose, but pricks his finger on its thorn.
