🧹The Four Seasons

Le quattro stagioni: four violin concertos published in 1725, one for each part of the year, three movements each, fast, slow, fast. Each came with a sonnet describing what the music is doing: birdsong, a storm, a drunk falling asleep at harvest, teeth chattering in the cold.

Cleaning music. I am not proud of it. It is the most overplayed piece in the repertoire, it is in every lift and every phone queue, and it is exactly the right tempo for a mop.

Discovered on 2025-06-21-Saturday in Averley, cleaning Mum's kitchen while her knee was out of action. Her radio was playing it. I did the floor, the oven door and the inside of the fridge before the last concerto was done, and I have not managed a kitchen that fast since.

Now it is the soundtrack to my half of 🔄 Saturday clean, which is the floors:

• The first concerto: hoovering. The birds are inaudible, which is fine.
• The summer storm: the hall, at speed.
• The autumn one: mopping, more slowly.
• The slow movement of the last one, rain against a window while somebody sits by the fire: the kettle goes on.

Jonas, who does the bathroom, has asked whether there are other composers. There are. They do not clean as well.

Three out of five as something to sit and listen to. Five as equipment.