Music of The Hunt - Austrian Tonkunstler Orchestra, Dietfried Bernet

Music of the Hunt liner notes

For the past seven hundred years, hunting the stag has been the sport of kings, embellished by special dress, ceremonial, and music. So gay, colorful, and exciting an activity was this that artists of many kinds -- painters, sculptors, tapestry makers, and wood carvers -- have described one or another of its various stages from the gathering of the hunt to the hunt breakfast, the ride through varying scenery, the loosing of the dogs, the chase over hills and through thickets, and the ritual of the slaying and division of the carcass -- the choicest parts being apportioned to the ladies and gentlemen of the hunt, the entrails going to the hounds, the humbles or inferior portions being assigned to the beaters -- whence comes our expression "to eat humble pie".