Your Favourite Evocations of Visual Phenomena in Music

[Sir Velo]

It's interesting the methods by which composers attempt to realise a visual impression of natural phenomena by musical means alone. Any musical depiction of an experience which is received primarily by means of optical sensations is always facing the battle of seeking to convey that impression by sonic means alone. How does a composer portray a sunrise? Is Haydn's celebrated sunrise in his symphony, Le Matin, or Ravel's in Daphnis, or Mussorgsky's Dawn on the Moscow River any "better" at conveying an impression of sunrise? One thing they seem to have in common is starting with vague stirrings on the strings before culminating in a fortissimo.

What other memorable evocations are there in music of the natural world; and what is it that makes that composer's "vision" so memorable to our auditory faculties?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sorry to be boring and predictable, but the waterfall sequence in Eine Alpensinfonie is simply amazing.

[aeolium]

It is always easier for composers to represent phenomena which can be heard as well as seen, for instance the rippling of a stream, or birdsong, or a thunderstorm, or a hunt where the sound of the horses' hooves and the horns can be depicted. But purely visual phenomena, such as a still winter landscape or a sunrise - I'm not sure (Nielsen makes a good attempt at the latter in the Helios overture). But you never really know how much your response has been directed towards the idea of that phenomenon by what you know of the music, what you have read. The test would be if you were listening to a piece of music for the first time, knowing nothing about it beforehand, and conceived "innocently" of the visual phenomenon which the composer had intended to represent. I'm not sure how many works (if any) I can think of where that has happened to me.

[Pabmusic]

Of course there are many wonderful musical depictions of dawn, but I'd choose Ravel's from Daphnis & Chloe. Likewise, Sibelius's storm music in the overture to The Tempest is pretty impressive.

[Nick Armstrong]

Sorry to be boring and predictable, but the waterfall sequence in Eine Alpensinfonie is simply amazing.

Hardly boring, that's about as good as it gets in this genre!

[kernelbogey]

Of course there are many wonderful musical depictions of dawn, but I'd choose Ravel's from Daphnis & Chloe....

I second Pab's choice. The William Tell overture was one of the first pieces I got to know and the storm sequence in that is also impressive. But that in Symphonie Fantastique, with its timpani parts, is very evocative of the approach and departure of thunder.

I think the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony, rather than the others, is most evocative of an experience of the country, precisely because it is abstract, about joyful feelings, rather than imitative.

Slightly off the OP but the movements for violin and piano, and cello and piano, in Messiaen, Quattuor pur le Fin de Temps evoke the idea of eternity - perhaps as represented by space - most deeply of any music I know.

[Parry1912]

Sorry to be boring and predictable, but the waterfall sequence in Eine Alpensinfonie is simply amazing.

The sunrise in the same work also gets my vote.

[MrGongGong]

I'm rather keen on this one

http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/Programme/Past/event/117/optophonic_lunaphone/

[kernelbogey]

I think the fire music in the last act of Die Walkuere is superbly evocative of fire.

To address the OP's final question

what is it that makes that composer's "vision" so memorable to our auditory faculties?

there must be a correspondence between the experience of, say, a sunrise with its growing intensity, and the use of volume and key changes etc that set up similar neural stimulation. Not unlike, perhaps, the capacity of the sense of smell to evoke a taste, with food drink etc.

[Madame Suggia]

Sibelius: Night Ride and Sunrise

Close my eyes and i'm there

[EdgeleyRob]

RVW Sinfonia Antarctica,sounds like ice,especially the third movement.

[Serial_Apologist]

Sibelius - the sudden downward rush at the close of the slow movement of Symphony No 2 evokes avalanche for me.

Music either evokes the outdoos or it doesn't, in my case. I don't get visual images of nature, landscape, people even when listening to classical symphonies, or more generally music of the Austro-German lineage, with the exception of Mahler, (Richard Strausss doesn't do it for me!), whereas French, Italian, American, Latin American, British, Spanish, Hungarian, Scandinavian (though not Nielsen, for some reason) and Russian composers do seem to provide plentiful images all the time. A case for "indoor" and "outdoor" music perhaps - or music that beckons one to landscapes, nature, as opposed to music that encloses one inside one's head.

[Flay]

The sunrise in the same work also gets my vote.

The Alpensinfonie has to be the ultimate evocative work, even to its final section where the fatigued wanderer plods through the mist back home to his bed, his head hitting the pillow with a yawn.

[jayne lee wilson]

There are great sunrises in the Gurrelieder, Bartok's Wooden Prince and Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen, but would I guess what they were if I didn't know?
I'm not so sure!

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

The storms in the William Tell Overture and the 'Pastoral' Symphony are very good, but they’re not a patch on the opening bars of Verdi’s Otello, which are visceral.

I always think that the opening to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.1 is excellent at conjuring up a mental image of a snowy landscape. There’s something about the gentle rustle of strings and the woodwind phrases which evokes the fragility of falling snow as the traveller sets off on a journey.

Ravel’s sunrise from Daphnis et Chloé is special just as much for its depiction of location as for its evocation of a rising sun – you can also ‘hear’ the shimmering Aegean and feel the heat.