Sommarnatten from Idyll (c 1916)

Like Stenhammar, Ture Rangström was a firm believer in the idea that song must emerge from the spoken language: “speech melody”, he called it. This did not inhibit him, however, when it came to introducing decorative effects in to his music, like the song of the thrush in the delightfully characterised Sommarnatten from his settings of Runeberg’s Idylls.