The Seasons (Haydn) France or French people; Haydn in fact had friendly relationships with French musicians (see, e.g. Paris symphonies). Rather, Haydn was probably referring to an earlier attempt by van Swieten to persuade him to set the croaking of the frogs by showing him a work by the French composer André Grétry that likewise included frog-croaking. Although the work has always attracted far less attention than "The Creation", it nonetheless has been strongly appreciated by critics. Charles Rosen calls both oratorios "among the greatest works of the century", but judges "The Seasons" to be the musically more successful of the two. Daniel
The Seasons (Cage) compositional technique involves using "gamuts" of sounds, i.e. predefined sonorities (single notes, chords, aggregates); Cage started developing this approach in "The Seasons", and later perfected it in "String Quartet in Four Parts" and "Concerto for Prepared Piano". The Seasons (Cage) The Seasons is a ballet with music by John Cage and choreography by Merce Cunningham, first performed in 1947. It was Cage's first piece for orchestra and also the first to use what Cage later called the "gamut" technique, albeit in an early form. Cage composed the music in early 1947, in the midst of working on "Sonatas and Interludes".