Music for all seasons 2 – Autumn

Suggestions for your autumnal listening. A playlist to accompany this blog can be found on Spotify at: Talking about Music - Music for all seasons - Autumn

When does Autumn start these days? I’m sure it used to be shortly after we went back to school following the Summer holidays. Not long after the term started, there might be preparations for the annual Harvest Festival. As a music teacher I used to resent Harvest – so much work with no-one to see (it was essentially a big assembly which only the school watched, until it was agreed the preparations warranted a ‘proper’ audience and parents were allowed to attend). As a child, conkers were a big thing and I have vivid memories of hundreds of conkers and their open cases strewn across the pavement near my local church. Collecting them was an important task that had to be carried out on a particular day (Lord knows why or who decided that). I don’t know if anyone still plays conkers now but I do know that I never won a single game!

Autumn also included Hallowe’en – a mildly spooky time marked by a few songs, some witchy painting or modelling at school and possibly a film on television. It hadn’t, at that point, become the commercial monstrosity that it is today and I can remember my piano teacher, Miss Page (a fearsome spinster) expressing her outrage and disgust on opening the front  of her house, mid-lesson, to some kids declaring “trick or treat”! Needless to say, they went away empty handed. I think Autumn’s end was celebrated with Guy Fawkes Night. My eight year-old self would walk home after school (as the afternoon light was already fading – still one of my favourite times of day) looking in awe at those older children sitting in front of the illuminated high street shops,  asking for a ‘penny for the guy’ . The guy was usually a baggy affair with a mask made of pink or green egg-box cardboard (why those two colours?!!). Firework displays were only seen on TV, accompanied by Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, but couldn’t match the excitement of the two boxes of Astra or Standard fireworks that Dad used to bring home and light fearlessly in the back garden. Choosing which firework should be lit next was a serious decision not to be taken lightly and the empty cases were inspected carefully on the morning after.

I haven’t mentioned the changing foliage, whose colours make Autumn one of my Mum’s favourite seasons. When I think back to my childhood Autumns, the leaves are always wet and dark on the ground. I think I’m more likely to see the golds and reds these days and to relish the occasional mists. Such images always strike me as slightly melancholy, perhaps because they signify the end of summer and almost the end of the year – winter being, for me, a season of stasis. This view has certainly influenced my autumn listening and the suggestions I am making for yours! Mine is a very personal view of course, and not one shared by everyone. Indeed, the most obvious musical recommendation - for Vivaldi’s Autumn (from The Four Seasons) – is not something I would necessarily listen to myself. Vivaldi sees Autumn as a time for harvesting and subsequent festivities. There is a general bonhomie to the music which speaks of time spent in the fields under an Autumn sun. The jovial first movement is an evocation of dancing with a good glass of chianti, whilst the last was inspired by the image of a hunt led by dogs and horns (a more gruesome scene than the music has always suggested to me – I hear a very rustic dance). Vivaldi was, in the past, dismissed as a composer and accused of writing the same concerto 400 times. This is grossly unfair and there is much skilful writing in the Four Seasons that goes unnoticed as a result of its over-familiarity. I’ll mention Winter (which I consider to be very modern for its time) in my next seasonal article.

My first recommendation: Debussy’s Second Book of Preludes, has, in fact, little to do with Autumn at all. Claude Debussy was a French composer whose life was ended by cancer at the relatively early age of 55. When I was a student, the greatest composers of the 20th Century were generally considered to be Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Debussy. Bartok was sometimes included (unjustifiably, in my opinion, fine composer though he was) and I did read a book which suggested that the American, Charles Ives, also belonged in that company. At the time I thought this to be a ridiculous claim. 30 years later, I haven’t changed my mind. In recent years, I believe Schoenberg has begun to be seen as important but not necessarily one of the greatest. Stravinsky‘s status also seems to be under revision.  Not so Debussy who, in my opinion, deserves his reputation as one of the very greatest of all composers. His use of harmony to create colour was extraordinary and his music is innovative, ingenious and yet not lacking emotion.

Debussy’s output was not huge but his contribution to the piano repertory was immense (if I could only play the music of two composers for the rest of my life I would choose Beethoven and Debussy). Essentially a miniaturist, Debussy was fond of giving his pieces evocative titles which summed up the intent behind them (‘Footprints in the Snow’, ‘The Sunken Cathedral’ ‘What the West Wind saw’). The music does not seek to describe but to give an impression of a place, scenario or character. Debussy was, in effect, a musical impressionist – a musical Monet, if you like. His second book of Preludes, more harmonically advanced than the first, opens with Brouillards (Fog) which swirls both rhythmically and harmonically, never settling into any definite shape and muted in colour. This is followed by Feuilles Mortes (Dead Leaves), a sombre piece whose main figure (two notes falling) has been likened to a sign.

My next recommendation is by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (no – I haven’t a clue how you pronounce his first name). Rautavaara is one of those composers whose early compositions might be considered avant garde but who later chose to write in a more accessible style (in this case, one which has been described as neo-romantic and mystical). One of his most popular works is the three-movement “Cantus Articus” (1972), for orchestra supplemented by recorded birdsong.

The first movement is entitled ‘The Marsh’. You can choose to listen just to notes, in which case you are likely to find the music both ugly and infuriating. May I suggest you do yourself a favour and listen for the sounds of nature: the opening flute blows through dew-tipped long grass and there is birdsong in the discords of the trumpets, oboes and trombones. Add to this the sound of recorded birds and the overall effect is both eerie and bewitching. Eventually, through this cacophony steals a broad theme in the strings. What this represents I cannot say but I find it both inspiring and moving. The second movement, ‘Melancholy’, feels more lyrical and features densely scored, shifting strings. The final movement, ‘Swans Migrating’, is the most forward-moving of the three but also the brightest. In keeping with the title, the music is written in the upper registers of the orchestra and as a gradual crescendo, achieving a sense of something visionary. I find the Cantus Articus to be an extraordinary piece. In an ideal world, you should listen to this while going for a country walk at dusk, preferably near water. If you can’t manage that, at least find time to try it when you can relax and imagine an appropriate scene. This really is a terrific introduction to modern music.

On Wenlock Edge is a song-cycle by Vaughan Williams, setting six poems from A E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. It was composed in 1909 for tenor voice and piano quintet. Vaughan Williams later created a new arrangement for orchestra. Both are excellent although my preference is for the orchestral version which, to my ears, offers more instrumental colour. The poems set here concern themselves with time, love and death. The opening song – ‘On Wenlock Edge’ - is one of the most vivid evocations of a windy day in all music. The tenor stands in the midst of gusts and squalls, musing that the same wind which now batters the wood had, in the past, blown through the country occupied by the Romans. The third song, ‘Is my team ploughing?’ is an unsettling dialogue between a farmworker and the dead friend whose lover he has taken to his own bed. In the decidedly less ghoulish fifth song, the singer mourns his deceased wife. The other songs in the cycle are less downbeat (if I can phrase it like that). Indeed, in the fourth song: ‘When I was in love with you’, Vaughan Williams’s setting is marvellously attuned to the wit and brevity of Housman’s text:

Oh, when I was in love with you,

Then I was clean and brave,

And miles around the wonder grew

How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,

And nothing will remain,

And miles around they’ll say that I

Am quite myself again.

I realise that my suggestions reflect a more melancholy view of Autumn than you may take. (And I have resisted talking about the music of Sibelius or, indeed, Strauss’s Four Last Songs, which may be considered Autumnal.) But I would like to think that any of the pieces described would provide an appropriate soundtrack to an Autumn afternoon. I hope you will find time not only to explore at least some of them but also to be prepared to give them a second chance – we are fortunate indeed if we can appreciate great art on first encounter. I wish you happy leaf-crunching walks and a clear and frosty firework night!

Playlist - Talking about Music - Music for all seasons - Autumn