Summer Reaches Middle Age

 

If you define your seasons by high temperature climatologists tell us the next week will mark the middle of summer in the northern hemisphere. It probably doesn't feel like that in the American West where temperature records have been set for the last month. On the other hand some regions - the Southeast for one - have enjoyed a mild summer so far. That's about to change as the "dog days" take over in much of the eastern US. Regardless, the sun reached its zenith or highest point in the sky in late June and every day since then it has been in a slow and virtually undetectable descent. Yes, the summer of 2021 is already aging. In fact it has reached what I call its middle age. As we move further into the season of growth and flower I am reminded of this quote by the English writer and poet, D.H. Lawrence:

The greatest need of man is the renewal forever of the complete rhythm of life and death, the rhythm of the sun's year, the body's year.

One expression of that complete rhythm is the full range of summer themes in the vast catalog of music we can explore. First, here is a tone poem, A Song of Summer, composed by Frederick Delius in 1931 and transcribed and arranged by his amanuensis, Eric Fenby:

Seven hundred years earlier this was the sound of summer in England:

(Middle English)

Sumer is icumen in

Lhude sing cuccu!

Groweþ sed and bloweþ med

And springþ þe wde nu,

Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteþ after lomb,

Lhouþ after calue cu.

Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ,

Murie sing cuccu!

Cuccu, cuccu, wel singes þu cuccu;

Ne swik þu nauer nu.

Pes:

Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.

Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!

(Modern English)

Summer has arrived,

Loudly sing, Cuckoo!

The seed grows and the meadow

blooms

And the wood springs anew,

Sing, Cuckoo!

The ewe bleats after the lamb

The cow lows after the calf.

The bullock stirs, the stag farts,

Merrily sing, Cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing,

cuckoo;

Don't ever you stop now,

Sing cuckoo now. Sing, Cuckoo.

Sing Cuckoo. Sing cuckoo now!

And finally, there is summer as the season of youth, the school break, the summer job, of free time and good friends, and for many what the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell called "friendship set to music."

Wherever you find yourself in the rhythm of the season, may life in the remaining summer of 2021 be easy and wonder-filled.