summertime violin and cello duet

What is summer music? Most people would probably think it’s music that’s calm, rural and relaxing. Delius’s Summer Evening ( below) is exactly that:

But for Vivaldi summer evoked different feelings. His ‘Summer’ in The Four Seasons is an early example of programmatic music. Vivaldi wrote his own sonnets in the score to explain what the music is describing. The first movement’s sonnet reads: ” Langour in the heat” . This is followed by:  ” …beneath the blazing sun’s relentless heat men and flocks are sweltering  and the cuckoo’s voice can be heard.”  

For Gershwin the season was even more complex. His aria Summertime  opens his opera Porgy and Bess which is set in a black tenement in South Carolina in the 1930s. The  themes of the opera are romance struggling against poverty, drug taking and violence. Our violin and cello duet version is below:

…and you can buy our violin and cello duet sheet music arrangement here