Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree is a set of variations, with fugue

Fugue

In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....

, for orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

 composed in 1939 by Jaromír Weinberger

Jaromír Weinberger

- Biography :Weinberger was born in Prague, from a family of Jewish origin. He heard Czech folksongs from time spent at his grandparents' farm as a youth. He started to play the piano at age 5, and was composing and conducting by age 10. He began musical studies with Jaroslav Křička. Later teachers...

. It premiered under the direction of Sir John Barbirolli

John Barbirolli

Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 on October 12, 1939. The work is based on an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 popular song of the period, which Weinberger is said to have mistaken for a folk song, and opens with the theme presented without preliminaries. Seven variations follow:

• Her Majesty's Virginal
• The Madrigal
  Madrigal (music)
  A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
  
  ists
• The Dark Lady
  Dark Lady (character)
  The Dark Lady is a stock character in fiction. Her darkness is either literal, meaning that she has a dark skin, or metaphorical in that she is a tragic, doomed figure. The two may go together, with one being an allegory for the other.-Shakespeare:...
  
  
• The Highlanders
• Pastoral
  Pastoral
  The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
  
  e
• Mr. Weller, Senior, Discusses Widows With His Son, Samuel Weller, Esquire
  The Pickwick Papers
  The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...
  
  
• Sarabande
  Sarabande
  In music, the sarabande is a dance in triple metre. The second and third beats of each measure are often tied, giving the dance a distinctive rhythm of quarter notes and eighth notes in alternation...
  
  

The fugue, which ends the work, has an eight-bar subject which finally joins contrapuntally with the original theme of the piece.

It was popularized in Japan during the American occupation of Japan.