The Seasons (Haydn) Heartz, writing near the end of a massive three-volume account of the Classical era, writes "The Hunting and Drinking choruses first led me to study Haydn's music more extensively beginning some forty years ago ... no music has elated me more in old age than "The Seasons"." Michael Steinberg writes that the work "ensure[s] Haydn's premiere place with Titian, Michelangelo and Turner, Mann and Goethe, Verdi and Stravinsky, as one of the rare artists to whom old age brings the gift of ever bolder invention." Opinions vary as to the nature of the relationship between "The Creation" and "The Seasons"
The Seasons (Cage) 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". A piano version was first completed, and an orchestral arrangement followed. Cage dedicated "The Seasons" to Lincoln Kirstein. The ballet was premiered on May 17, 1947 by the Ballet Society (by which the work was commissioned) at