This exciting, rhythmic overture for band is in the fast-slow-fast format of the early 18th-century Italian opera overtures. The composer's purpose was to capture the twin elements (exuberant, youthful gaiety and the sweetness of tender love) found in the excerpt from Atlanta in Calydon, written in 1865 by the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With ...