The end of summer

[Alison]

Summer's Last Will and Testment - Constant Lambert.

Nice one Segilla

[BetweenTheStaves]

What summer? Quite the worst since records began. Technically, of course it doesn't end until 21 September as any schoolboy or girl should know.

Spot on. It ended in April after that short wonderful hot summer.

[Segilla]

This was broadcast many years ago. (Was he Composer of the Week?). I still have a tape of it here somewhere.
I seem to recall his full ballet Tiresias was also included which I was taken to see at CG around 1950 but the music was a puzzle at the time.

[Petrushka]

Opinions seem to differ about this summer. One friend thinks it has been wonderful whereas I think it has been average at best. There has been no sustained heatwave and too much cloud and rain for my liking. It has also been very windy for the season.

As for music, the only complete work that captures the mood of autumn is Brahms 3. September from Strauss's Four Last Songs and Die Einsame im Herbst from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde catch that strange melancholy I always feel as the summer fades.

I should also add that I spotted Christmas cards in a local card shop last week.

[Bryn]

Summer is not allowed to end until at least the 16th September, the day after I return from my summer holiday.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

both indispensable accompaniments to the mists of autumn for this jazbo

[Mr Pee]

Opinions seem to differ about this summer. One friend thinks it has been wonderful whereas I think it has been average at best. There has been no sustained heatwave and too much cloud and rain for my liking. It has also been very windy for the season.

I think you're right, Petrushka.....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8730125/Parts-of-Britain-suffer-coldest-summer-for-nearly-two-decades.html

[Mr Pee]

Autumn is probably my favourite time of year- I love the colours, the first frosts, and those clear, cool days that we sometimes get. I even like the nights drawing in- something about that feeling of transition, the eternal cycle of the seasons.

The only thing I DON'T like about this time of year is the knowledge that in a very few weeks, Tesco will have their first aisle of Christmas merchandise on display.....

[scottycelt]

The only thing I DON'T like about this time of year is the knowledge that in a very few weeks, Tesco will have their first aisle of Christmas merchandise on display.....

Crikey, that's a bit late as, in my branch, they are already selling hot-cross buns ...

[salymap]

My litle Asian local shop sells hot-cross buns all the year round. I often buy them as they don't stock any ordinary fruit buns. They have hot-cross buns and crumpets piled high and the wrong sort of bread for me. [I like Hovis wholemeal}.

[Norfolk Born]

William Alwyn's 'Autumn Legend' exudes a fair degree of seasonal melancholy. So does Dinah Washington singing 'September In The Rain'.

[marthe]

Calum, thanks for the suitably autumnal music. I love the change of seasons, even the dull days of November. I'm a real September gal (birthday mid-month) so that must have something to do with it. Mr. Pee, I hate to see Christmas things in the shops so early in the season. Bah, humbug! I'm already receiving Christmas gift catalogues which I promptly put out in the paper recycle bin.

[Serial_Apologist]

My litle Asian local shop sells hot-cross buns all the year round. I often buy them as they don't stock any ordinary fruit buns. They have hot-cross buns and crumpets piled high and the wrong sort of bread for me. [I like Hovis wholemeal}.

No hot cross buns in our supermarket - only cold uncrossed ones - but always plenty of crumpet. When they ask for my "loyalty card" I always say it's against my religion. They never said anything in Bristol - very literal-minded lot, them Bristolians (French Frank apart) - but when I came back here to London, the very first time, they asked me, "And what religion would that be then?" So, caught on the hop, I said, "The church against Commercial Busybodies who Snoop into Customers' Buying Patterns and Offer Two Weeks Cruising in the Caribbean for Two, Five Hundred Kitchen Rolls in Quilted Salmon Pink, Three Hundred Disposable Nappies or Two Hundred Tins of Baked Beans - none of which I will ever need". That floored 'em!

[Belgrove]

I noticed just this morning that the Horse-chestnuts hereabouts have started dropping their conkers, the earliest I can recall, and the blackberry briars and early apples were fruiting at the beginning of this month. The fruit has been excellent this year.

As for appropriate music - Brahms' clarinet quintet.

[pilamenon]

I've just picked a goodly crop of ripe sloes from the hedgerows - presumably the result of that hot, dry spring. I think of this time of year as neither summer nor autumn, and love it for itself, tinged with melancholy as it is. But like most of our seasons nowadays it can vary wildly. And after the coldish summer and wettish August, wouldn't be surprised to get an Indian summer now.