I am at school preparing to teach my music classes. One of the works that I will introduce to the class is The Hounds of Spring by Alfred Reed. This work is supposed to by a musical picture of young love based on Algernon Swinburne's poem from Atalanta in Calydon. Swinburne's poetry is based on the legends of Thrace, ancient Greece and the legends of Troy told to us in the poetry of Homer, the Illiad and the Odyssey.
Unfortunately, it would seem that the programme notes got it wrong. Itylus who is mentioned in the first verse was killed by the nightingale who was his mother. She was envious of her sister-in-law who had six children. She planned to kill the eldest but accidentally killed her own son, Itylus. Her grief was so great that Zeus turned her into a nightingale.
This is one of the many reasons that we need to study the poetry and legends of the ancients.
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