Today The University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs our 2025 Halloween Concert. During the the William (Guillaume) Tell Overture by Gioachino Rossini, there’s a lovely slow passage in the middle of the piece:
This pastorale section in G major and in an A-B-A-Coda form, signifying the calm after the storm, begins with a Ranz des vaches or “Call to the Cows”, featuring the cor anglais (English horn). The English horn then plays in alternating phrases with the flute, culminating in a duet with the triangle accompanying them in the background.
This segment is often used in animated cartoons to signify daybreak or bucolic beauty, most notably in Walt Disney’s The Old Mill and Marv Newland’s Bambi Meets Godzilla, which uses the tune as its main musical score before Godzilla stomps on Bambi.
Wikipedia William Tell Overture
Here’s me playing it:
About 40 years later after Rossini’s William Tell, the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s incidental music to Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 play Peer Gynt, also has a similar passage in “Morning Mood”, where the flute and oboe take turns to sing a melody: