by Emily E. Hogstad September 2nd, 2024
© Davidgn/Dreamstime.com
Today, we’re looking at almost four centuries of music. So grab a pumpkin spice latte, settle in, and enjoy these thirty pieces of classical music about autumn.
The 4 Seasons by Christopher Simpson (ca 1640s) Christopher Simpson was an English composer and virtuoso viol player. (Viol instruments were predecessors to modern string instruments.)
Simpson wrote his Four Seasons for a treble instrument, two bass viols, and continuo. In each one, he included a fantasy, an air, and a galliard (a type of energetic dance).
Players also added their own ornamentation to the work to customize their interpretations.
Autumn from the Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi (1724)
Let’s be honest…you knew this work would be on the list!
In 1724, composer and violinist Antonio Vivaldi wrote a set of violin concertos inspired by each of the four seasons.
He also included poetry in the score to describe in words what he was describing in music.
His autumn concerto portrays harvest celebrations and hunting parties.
Autumn from The Seasons by Joseph Haydn (1801) ut in modern movie terms, The Seasons was a bit of a cash-grab sequel to Haydn’s wildly popular oratorio The Creation.
Unfortunately, like many sequels, it wasn’t as successful as the work that inspired it, but it’s still worth enjoying today.
The forces required to mount The Seasons include a large orchestra, a chorus, and three vocal soloists.
Like Vivaldi, Haydn chose to highlight harvest celebrations and hunting parties. The hunting chorus is one of the best of its era.
October from Das Jahr (The Year) by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1841)
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was composer Felix Mendessohn’s older sister, as well as a brilliant pianist and astonishingly productive composer.
Because she was a woman, many of her works never entered the standard repertoire in the way that her brothers did. Luckily for listeners, that’s beginning to change.
Das Jahr (The Year) is a set of piano pieces that trace the year month-by-month.
In a clever twist on the autumnal hunting motif, Hensel’s October’s piece features horn calls that turn out to be traveling minstrels. The deer in the forest may be startled, but the work ends with a happy flourish.
In Autumn by Edvard Grieg (1865)
Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg was 22 when he wrote this overture. A fellow composer friend told him, “This is trash, Grieg; go home and write something better.”
So Grieg transcribed it for two pianos and submitted it to a composing competition…and that critical composer friend just happened to be on the jury! Amusingly, In Autumn ended up winning first prize.
E.Grieg Concert Overture “In Autumn” op.11 for piano 4 hands
Autumn Song by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1876)
In the 1870s, Tchaikovsky had the same idea as Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel: writing a series of piano works, one inspired by each month.
His October song begins with a snippet of poetry:
Autumn, our poor garden is all falling down,
the yellowed leaves are flying in the wind.
The music itself is a wistful, lovely sigh for solo piano, with the melancholy that is brought on by the season in full display. Anyone who has lived in a northern climate can relate!
Symphony No. 10: “To Autumntime” by Joseph Joachim Raff (1879)
Joachim Raff was born in 1822 in Switzerland.
He worked with many of the big names of Romantic music (including Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Clara Schumann) and was widely acclaimed in his own time, but is rarely heard today.
This symphony has four movements, and each was published with subtitles:
I. Impressions & Feelings
II. Ghostly Round-Dance
III. Elegie
IV. Men Hunting
“Pensée d’automne” by Jules Massenet (1887)
In the song Pensée d’automne, or Thoughts in Autumn, composer Jules Massenet set a poem by French poet Armand Silvestre to music.
The poem speaks of “grieving birds” and “withered flower cups.” The narrator wistfully invites a lover to return to the place where they courted in the springtime.
He then points out that his love for her has made the season irrelevant:
Let the beautiful days die! Let the harsh winter be born again!
Like a joyful hymn in the moaning wind,
A song of love emerges from my devoted heart!
Autumn: Etude de Concert No. 2, Op. 35 by Cécile Chaminade (1886)
French composer Cécile Chaminade was one of the most popular composers of her era. She focused primarily on writing piano music and miniatures. They proved to be especially popular in the domestic sheet music market.
That popularity, combined with her sentimental romantic style as well as her gender, led her to be dismissed as an unserious artist.
This autumn-inspired etude challenges that assumption. It’s both achingly tender and technically challenging.
8 Characteristic Pieces, En Automne, by Moritz Moszkowski (1886) Play
Moritz Moszkowski was a German pianist and composer of Polish origin. Although his work is rarely seen on programs today, he was very popular during his lifetime.
This work, from his set of eight Characteristic Pieces, seems to portray a chilly wind blowing leaves off the trees in colored swirls.
Four Sketches, op. 15: In Autumn by Amy Beach (1892)
Amy Beach was a profoundly talented American composer and pianist. She began writing little waltzes for piano when she was only four years old.
After she got married at the age of eighteen, she focused on composition because it wasn’t seemly for a respectable wife of a doctor to tour as a piano soloist.
In 1892’s Four Sketches, written when she was twenty-five, a snippet of poetry appears at the “In Autumn” movement: “yellowing foliage on scattered lawns.” This is a quote from French poet and statesman Alphonse de Lamartine. moods of autumn.
From Vivaldi’s lilting Four Seasons to Tchaikovsky’s melancholy “Autumn Song” to Musgrave’s grim fall hunt, classical music evokes the complex emotions brought about by the season in a way that no other art form can.
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