MUSIC

A MOONFEST Musicfest might include:

  • Excerpts from Haydn's opera Il Mondo della Luna
  • Edward Elgar's In Moonlight set to Percy Bysshe Shelley's words
  • Debussy's Clair de Lune
  • Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
  • Bernard Rands's song cycle Canti Lunatici

Or a MOONFEST Choir performance:

Carl Orff's opera Der Mond (based on a Grimm fairy tale) tells the story of four men who find the moon hanging on a tree. Each carries one quarter of the moon to the underworld when he dies, and the underworld becomes illuminated. The dead wake and begin a round of drinking and carousing that ends only when the Skykeeper rescues the moon and brings it back above ground, hanging it in the sky where it has remained ever since.

Or a MOONFEST Songfest:

  • "Fly Me to the Moon"
  • "Moon River"
  • "Moonlight Becomes You"
  • "Old Devil Moon"
  • "By the Light of the Silvery Moon"
  • "Copper Kettle" ("Watch them jugs a-filling in the pale moonlight")
  • "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" ("And the moon and stars were the gifts you gave")
  • "Buffalo Gal Won't You Come Out Tonight" ("And dance by the light of the moon")
  • "Shine On, Harvest Moon"
  • "The Best Things in Life Are Free" ("The moon belongs to everyone")
  • "I Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night"
  • "Hey Diddle, Diddle" ("The cow jumped over the moon")
  • "It's Only A Paper Moon"
  • "Moon Over Alabama"
  • "As Time Goes By" ("Moonlight and love songs")
  • "Song About the Moon"
  • "Moon Shadow"
  • "Moondance"
  • "Ole Kentucky Moon"
  • "Moon Over Miami"
  • "Aquarius" ("When the moon is in the Seventh House")
  • "Blue Moon"
  • "Just One of Those Things" ("A trip to the moon on gossamer wings")
  • "My Romance" ("Doesn't have to have a moon in the sky")
  • "Down With Love" ("Take that moon, Wrap it in cellophane")
  • "You Make Me Feel So Young" ("I want to go and bounce the moon just like a toy balloon")
  • "Black Water" ("Mississippi moon won't you keep on shinin' on me")
  • "I'll Be Seeing You" ("I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you")
  • "Such A Night" ("Sweet confusion under the moonlight")
  • "Until" ("Saddle up the moon and take a ride")


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Hey! Diddle, Diddle, the Cat
and the Fiddle!
Arthur Rackham,
from St. Nicholas, October 1913

The moon's phases play a major role in myth, native rite and beliefs about human behavior, spanning all continents and cultures.

In China and throughout Asia, the harvest moon is celebrated 15 days after the eighth lunar month with special songs, poems, dances and foods.

The Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific whoop and chant on the occasion of the new moon, believing that it brings happiness.

In Sicily, the full moon was believed to be a powerful force for prosperity. Men and women were advised to hold a dollar up to the full moon's beams while saying, "Fill," nine times.

In Cuba until 1928 the law prohibited cutting trees when the moon was in a period of increase. It was believed that the sap rose in the trees as the moon got bigger, thus good lumber could be cut only as the moon got smaller.

In ancient Sparta, soldiers wouldn't go into battle until the new moon appeared.