D'Indy was a Parisian; the 1885 Fantin-Latour portrait capturing him, thin, intense, and prominent amid a group of musicians and Wagner enthusiasts gathered around Chabrier at the piano captures the fact. As the up-and-coming French composer of his generation—his eclipse by Debussy would not begin until after the turn of the century—d'Indy seemed to be involved in all the most vital musical doings of the capital. But the family sprang from the ancient Vivarais district, amid the Cévennes, and from his nonage d'Indy spent his summers there, eventually building the palatial Chateau les Faugs near the family seat at Chabret for his holiday retreats. "In spite of his conscious professionalism," Martin Cooper noted, "one side of him remained a patriarchal countryman, with something of the air of a visitor to Paris and a background of health and earthiness." His love of the mountains was animated by the presence of his cousin, Isabelle de Pampelonne, whom he married in 1875—their story is sketched in the great tripartite piano Poème des Montagnes of 1881, but also finds expression in the glowing Symphonie Cévenole (1886), the setting of his most ambitious opera Fervaal (1889-1895), and in the great symphonic triptych Jour d'été à la montagne, whose composition occupied him through much of 1905. As Cooper remarked, "d'Indy in this work does for the mountains what Debussy in La Mer did for the sea, and in precisely the same year...." D'Indy conjures a cloudless dawn ("Aurore") on "my mountain," with the slowly emerging light heralded by bird calls and modulations ascending by fifths until the sun breaks over with an ecstatic trumpet fanfare. "Jour" is a sensuous meditation in a pine forest to which sounds of singing and dancing waft up—two folk songs providing the basis for a scherzo—before sudden thunder, a brief storm, and a return to the initial solitary mood. The festive opening of "Soir" gives way to darkness, reversing the modulatory scheme of "Aurore," as the Benedictine antiphon for August 15 is heard. Through December 1905 d'Indy was guest conductor with the Boston Symphony as it toured New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore, introducing the works of Franck, Fauré, Debussy, Dukas, Magnard, Chausson, and his own music to admiring audiences. Returning home he found his wife in the throes of a cerebral hemorrhage—she died in his arms. The premiere of Jour d'été with the Concerts Colonne was performed as a memorial to her on February 18, 1906.

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