Summer Playlist 2012: Ravel, Berlioz, The Requisite Vivaldi And More (PLAYLIST)

This Wednesday the Northern hemisphere celebrated the best of the solstices. Why best? Because unlike the winter solstice, when the sun's low position on the celestial sphere results in a day with less light than any other all year, the summer version is gloriously, wisely inverted, responsible for making the day it falls on last longer than any other all year. Light stretches on, free spirits hold hands over at old Stonehenge (and umbrellas, this year), and every single person in the 'sphere starts to think of dance parties and popsicles.

This year HuffPost Culture thought we'd address your dance-and-popsicle-party-throwing needs with a playlist. This is not just any playlist. Every single tune on it is classical. That means violins and pianos and to our knowledge, not a single instance of auto-tuning.

In attendance are Maurice Ravel's "Jeux D'Eau," or "Fountains," for cooling purposes, the dirty sounding but musically literal "He's Mounting Up, The Sun," by Joseph Haydn (h/t to The Well-Tempered Ear), and even the summer section from Antonio Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," though its not the most creative choice, and gloomier than we recalled from all those phone-order CD commercials we for some reason have seen. Because in the summertime, one doesn't exclude.

We've also gone ahead and ordered the list in the order of a summer day, at least the way we'd play it out. What this means is, the cemetery section of Hector Berlioz's "Summer Nights" song cycle shows up AFTER Debussy's "Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun." Do not schedule your faun-accompanying and your cemetery hopping all willy nilly! Fauns are best as daytime companions, when you can see them clearly (lyme disease), and cemeteries make for great summer night ouija parties.

Take a listen below, and let us know any if you have any class(ical)y contributions to add in the comments. Merry summer!