# Music for hot weather



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

This is one for those who live somewhere where hot weather cannot be guaranteed but comes sometimes. Does that hot weather change your listening habits? Is there music (or are there types of music) that you reach for when the weather turns hot? For a long time Ravel's Piano Concerto was my go to hot weather music but we are getting more hot weather these days in Britain and one piece doesn't do it. I do find myself wanting to listen to a lot more contemporary music when the weather is hot, though. How about you?


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Currently sunning ourselves in Southern France, the only music being whatever I have on in the car, so far it's been Bartok and Hindemith, for no conceivable reason. Possibly partly because I can't be bothered to change it?!?

I tend to binge-listen to composers in the summer, lots of x or y, catching up on the stuff I've bought and not given due attention to earlier in the school year. So far it's been lots of Marzendorfer Haydn, lots of Gielen Edition. I don't go looking for cold music, or sultry music, just because it's hot (that said, it's about 30c here each day, which is nice but not excessive!)


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

While I usually prefer to listen to music and/or watch movies at night, weather usually doesn't affect me much, though I do like to listen to Mendelssohn's "Midsummer's Night Dream" on summer nights, am will hopefully get this opera one day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snow_Maiden


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

When it's hot, the Sibelius symphonies make me feel cooler.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Anything by Amy Beach:


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

My summer listening queue tends to favor Baroque (but no more Bach than usual) and classical (with lots of Haydn).


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Les Nuits d'Ete (Crespin/Ansermet)


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Well, where I live summer is always hot - really hot. The music of Glazunov, Sibelius, Prokofieff, Ketelbey and Grieg always seem to cheer me up on a hot, sultry night. Of course, when the monsoons start Gliere's 3rd is essential.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The weather doesn't seem to affect my classical habits - the fact that I could easily listen to the _Easter Oratorio_ in November and the _Christmas Oratorio_ in July shows how seasonally off-target I can be. There are certain rock and pop songs which I will always associate with certain weather or time of the year, though, even if the weather or time of the year is not alluded to in the title and/or lyrics.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

On a hot summer day, to be under cool shade or cool indoors and listening to Respighi's _Ancient Airs and Dances_ always soothed the fevered brow.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

Listening to Water Music Suite by Handel ... We need the rain ... oh man, do we really need it to rain here in the Southwestern Desert of Arizona. 

The other day at church I ran through one of my favorite pieces: Fountain Reverie, by Percy Fletcher (for organ).


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

My hot summer weather composer is Delius. The man himself loved summer weather, when he would sit in his garden listening to the songs of the birds, often translating their language into music, and is probably the only famous composer who listed "orange cultivation" under special skills on his résumé. During the time Delius managed an orange plantation in Florida he grew to love the wilderness on the banks of the St. Johns River, and quickly took to the exotic life of canoeing and alligator hunts. Delius spent many evenings listening to the singing of former slaves on his plantation and on the riverboats passing during the night on their voyages back and forth from Jacksonville to Palatka, an old river town ten miles farther up river. From _Florida Suite_ to _Brigg Fair_ ("It was on the fifth of August-er, the weather fine and fair, Unto Brigg Fair I did repair, for love I was inclined"), _In a Summer Garden_, _Summer night on the River_, _Midsummer Song_, _Two Songs to be sung of a summer night on the water_, _Summer Landscape_, and _A Song of Summer_, Delius' lush orchestration and evocative settings make him my go-to composer in the summertime when the weather is hot.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Music for hot weather? *

I'll let you know when it cools down a little.
In the mean time I'm too busy listening to music, even though my tubed stereo equipment adds considerably to the heat already present in my listening room. Which is probably why my mind isn't in the mood for reflecting upon music for hot weather! It's just too dang hot!
Now, where's my Louisville recording of Paul Nordoff's "Winter Symphony" when I need it? Oh well, there's always the "Sinfonia Antartica" by Vaughan Williams, and the George Lloyd Fourth Symphony "Arctic"!


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Copland Appalachian Spring / Rodeo?


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

I live in a country where we turn on the air-conditioner for 7 to 8 months in a year, therefore there isn't so much of a need for "chill-out" music, but occasionally I'd like to save energy, and Gubaidulina and Messiaen work for me. Just make sure you have sufficient determination to focus on the music on a hot day and your pulse rate will come down, but do have a towel ready to wipe the sweat off the rocking chair once the music has stopped.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Merl said:


> Copland Appalachian Spring / Rodeo?


Aaron is all weather composer! :tiphat:

I could add also *Howard Hanson.* (Arctic symphony, for the very hot days)


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Larkenfield said:


> Anything by Amy Beach:


Was the because of the music or the name/word "Beach"?


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

CnC Bartok said:


> Currently sunning ourselves in Southern France, the only music being whatever I have on in the car, so far it's been Bartok and Hindemith, for no conceivable reason. Possibly partly because I can't be bothered to change it?!?
> 
> I tend to binge-listen to composers in the summer, lots of x or y, catching up on the stuff I've bought and not given due attention to earlier in the school year. So far it's been lots of Marzendorfer Haydn, lots of Gielen Edition. I don't go looking for cold music, or sultry music, just because it's hot (that said, it's about 30c here each day, which is nice but not excessive!)


Play Serge Gainsbourg. Bartok and Hindemith go better in winter.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Kiki said:


> I live in a country where we turn on the air-conditioner for 7 to 8 months in a year, therefore there isn't so much of a need for "chill-out" music, but occasionally I'd like to save energy, and Gubaidulina and Messiaen work for me. Just make sure you have sufficient determination to focus on the music on a hot day and your pulse rate will come down, but do have a towel ready to wipe the sweat off the rocking chair once the music has stopped.


That sort of music seems to work for me when the weather is hot. Over the last few weeks (which were mostly hot for southern England) I listened to a lot of Messiaen as well as plenty of Ligeti and Birtwistle. I have also had quite a taste for Haydn which certainly seemed to cool the temperature. I do not listen to "cold" or stormy weather like Sibelius when it is hot but often to in the Autumn and Winter. Now that the temperatures are falling in southern England I am finding a taste for Shostakovich - a composer I have barely listened to for quite some time.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Enjoying my Bruckner/Skrowaczewski set this morning. And heading to the gym midday. Will go outdoors tomorrow when it's a bit cooler. 70s this coming weekend! That'll be nice.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Red Terror said:


> Play Serge Gainsbourg. Bartok and Hindemith go better in winter.


Apologies, the closest we have to Gainsbourg in the car is Jacques Brel, and any comparison should result in either hoots of laughter or concerted derision.

Moved on to Beethoven and Smetana now..... temperature in Avignon yesterday was a slightly uncomfortable 37C...


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

This is going to sound odd but for me it's French music in general.


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

As general rule slower pieces, or things that are laid back in style.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

For those _really _hot, sweltering days:


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> Well, where I live summer is always hot - really hot. The music of Glazunov, Sibelius, Prokofieff, Ketelbey and Grieg always seem to cheer me up on a hot, sultry night. Of course, when the monsoons start Gliere's 3rd is essential.


I echo that. I'll go with Bax as well (not the forbidding language of a Winter Legends or the Sixth Symphony, but something not too hot, but radiant, like, say, Spring Fire or Christmas Eve, or the Third Symphony).

And then there's Kodaly's Summer Evening that's perfect for a stunning sunset during the season.
Martinu's Le Noel?
Melartin's Fourth Symphony "Summer"
Atterberg's Fourth Symphony also (for its playfulness)
William Grant Still's Second (sublime)


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