I AWOKE the other morning to the sound of Risin' Time on RTE and the jazzy strains of Benita Hill singing You and the Weatherman Lied. You know the song, of course«MDBO»
«MDNM»Forecast was `fair weather'
But it's raining outside,
You said we'd always be together,
You and the Weatherman lied.
Ignoring the calumny or, at the very least detraction implicit in the last line, I was reminded once again of the close relationship between music and the weather.
You may recall, for instance, a number of examples from the classics cited a few months ago in Weather Eye Vivaldi's Spring and Summer, the overture to William Tell, Haydn's La Tempesta, Mozart's The Thunderstorm, Berlioz's Symphonic Fantastique and Beethoven's Pastoral all have lively thunderstorms portrayed in the ways that reflect the genius of the individual maestri. Since then, I have been able to expand my weather repertoire.
Storms of various kind are all the rage, if one might coin a phrase. Sibelius's prelude, Tempest, for example, is so tempestuous as to be hardly musical at all, while his Swan of Tapiola features a realistic blizzard towards the end.
Sir Arthur Sullivan's overture to the Golden Legend also has a tempest, and the weather in Wagner's Flying Dutchman is stormy nearly all the way.
Ivan the Terrible by Rimsky Korsakov has its storm and the fourth movement of that same composer's Scheherazade, or Tales from Arabian Nights, has poor Sinbad's ship dashed helplessly against the rocks by a ferocious hurricane to the accompaniment of realistic wind sounds emanating from the strings.
A whirlwind motif is Tchaikovksy's Fransesca da Rimini is repeated several times, and Mendelssohn in the Hebrides Overture invites us to imagine the desolation of a rocky head land forever assailed by gale tossed foaming seas.
Friedrich Handel has been described as "the man who set the Bible to music" and his Messiah, of course, is the masterpiece in this genre. A less popular oratorio, however, is of greater interest to the meteorologist. "He gave them Hailstones" from Israel in Egypt includes one of the most powerful acoustic depictions of a hailstorm to be found anywhere in classical music.
And there are other examples of biblical weather in the scores the chorus "Thanks be to God that Laveth the Thirsty Land" from Mendelssohn's Eluah has an accompaniment that appropriately suggests a violent downpour, while Bach's St Matthew's Passion has vivid thunder and lightning to enhance the power of the Crucifixion scene.