Autumn Serenade

Autumn - but what's the soundtrack?

I usually listen to music with propulsive forward rhythms when I go out for a jog, but not this afternoon. Quite by accident I hit play just as I strolled outside for a late Sunday afternoon run, and an album of Vaughan Williams’ orchestral music started playing (Vernon Handley with the LPO).  As the photo here – taken from our front porch – shows, the light had that deep, rich hue that only autumn light has, and as the strains of Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis emerged from my iPod, I was transfixed by the beauty of the scene. Jogging the tree-lined roads, the music matched the play of light and shadow that poured through the canopy of colored leaves. Passing by the lake, I saw two swans gliding on the water before a backdrop of flaming orange and yellow trees – quite a stunning picture. Music and nature sure make a potent and delicious mix!

As the music soared to its luminous climax I didn’t want it to end, but thankfully the tracks that followed – Five Variants on Dives and Lazurus – maintained a similarly elegiac mood. Eventually, about half way through my run, the composer’s Job came up (a work I had only heard once before and which I barely know), and I was jarred out of my reverie by a few substantial outbursts of percussion. Good thing, too, because in my hypnotic state I stumbled off the side of the narrow ride and almost fell into a stream.

Sitting in my living room after the jog, as the last light of the day poured in and colored the room the deepest orange, I rifled through my mind and tried to come up with some more suitable music to match and maintain the autumnal ambience. That’s when I realized I don’t have the obvious “go to” music for autumn that I have for some other seasons. On the jazz side I have plenty of tracks to choose from, including my favorite, Autumn Serenade, as performed by John Coltrane and Johhny Hartman. But on the classical side nothing has that immediate autumn connection in my mind in the way I equate Mahler’s Third Symphony, for example, with summer.

Reflecting further on this, I thought, Of course, Mahler’s Song of the Earth, especially the final movement, “Der Abschied” – now that’s autumn music. Strauss’s Four Last Songs quickly came to mind after that. With the juices flowing I came up with a few other works I tend to listen to mostly in autumn, such as Dvorák’s New World Symphony and Sibelius’s Second.

Then I checked Facebook and noted that the status update of my colleague Devon Estes talked about his penchant at this time of year for listening to “indie rock, laid back hip hop and symphonies in minor keys.” But before writing to him to ask if he could name a few of the symphonies he was referring to, I’d like to throw the question open to readers and ask which classical works you associate with autumn, or find yourself playing most frequently during this season. Let me know below. 

By the way, if you don’t own the Coltrane/Hartman album mentioned above, buy it immediately.

For now, here are the appropriate lyrics to whet your appetite:

Thru the trees comes autumn with her serenade.
Melodies the sweetest music ever played.
Autumn kisses we knew are beautiful souvenirs.
As I pause to recall the leaves seem to fall like tears.
Silver stars were clinging to an autumn sky.
Love was ours until October wandered by.
Let the years come and go,
I'll still feel the glow that time cannot fade
When I hear that lovely autumn serenade.