Música para un jardín

Joaquín Rodrigo's Música para un jardín [Music for a garden], makes reference to a specific location: the Parque del Buen Retiro in the heart of Madrid. This work originally began as two lullabies, Berceuse de otoño (1923) and Berceuse de primavera (1928), first composed by Rodrigo for piano and subsequently arranged for orchestra in 1935. At a later date, the composer received a commission to produce the film music for a documentary on the park El Retiro. He augmented the existing material with two further lullabies (Berceuse de invierno and Berceuse de verano) and a prelude and postlude and completed the composition Música para un jardín in 1957. The first performance took place a year later in Valencia.

In Música para un jardín, Rodrigo paints a musical picture of the small world of a garden through the progress of the four seasons and invents catchy and occasionally folkloristic melodies. The composer depicts the gradual passage from one season to the next in the seamless transitions of melody between the various instrumental groups: autumn is depicted by oboe and cor anglais, winter by the clarinet (over a horn ostinato), spring by the violins and summer by the cellos.