The Seasons (Haydn) – whether they are two separate works or an enormous religious diptych. Van Swieten, at any rate, was certainly keen to follow up on the former's success with another large-scale pictorial work in a similar vein, and some authors have seen the two oratorios as constituting the first and second act of a metaphorical 'vast sacred opera'. The Seasons (Haydn) The Seasons (German: "Die Jahreszeiten"), Hob. XXI:3), is an oratorio by Joseph Haydn, first performed in 1801. Haydn was led to write "The Seasons" by the great success of his previous oratorio "The Creation" (1798), which had become very popular
The Seasons (Cage) built on the Indian concept of seasons: winter is associated with quiescence, spring with creation, summer with preservation and fall with destruction. The Finale is a reprise of the first Prelude, symbolizing the cyclical nature of seasons. As in the majority of Cage's compositions from the 1940s, the music of "The Seasons" is based on a predefined proportion. In this case the proportion is 2, 2, 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 3, 1, and it governs not only the construction of individual movements, but also the proportions of the entire work, roughly defining the relative lengths of the movements. The