Description
This suite for Orchestra commemorates and evokes the art of Charles E. Burchfield, whose paintings, mainly on the subject of Nature, have been descibed as 'visual music' - light and shadow, constant motion and dancing rhythms. It is in seven movements:
I - Prologue: A Passacaglia based on Burchfield's 'signature' - the motive CEB. Austere and quiet.
II - Spring: Ballad, outgoing and exuberant.
III - Brookside Music: Interlude - quiet and babbling, mysterious.
IV - Summer: Serenade, hot, humid, shimmering and pulsating.
V - Autumn: Scherzo - rhythmic, propulsive, fading at the end like the sound of rustling leaves.
VI - Winter: Reverie - elegaic, sustained stillness.
VII - The Four Seasons: Fantasy - a musical collage, reflecting Burchfield's paining containing all the elements, with its Gothic-like cathederal effect framing the sounds of storms, chorales and a final repeat of the Passacaglia.