Autumn Songs

In October 2019 I heard a lovely piece on NPR, Chanson d’Automne (Autumn Song) by British composer Stephen Reynolds. I happened to be driving near Chafin’s Music Store in Lake Worth, Florida, so I stopped and bought a copy. Now, a long year later, it still has me captivated, so I bought some chrysanthemums, dressed in fall colors, and made this recording. The piece begins and ends in C minor, but explores many other harmonic colors on its journey.

Another piece with the same title is by Dmitri Kabalevsky, Autumn Song, Op. 39, No. 11.

This short piece is in B minor all the way. When both hands play the same notes, the harmony is termed unison, but a pianist can project voices as she pleases. For the first eight measures I gave more weight to my left hand’s bass voice, then switched to focus on the treble voice for the next eight. For the final eight, I sought to balance both voices, bringing both the left and the right and the low and the high together in a true unison.

With one composition by a Brit and the other by a Russian, I am an American musician calling for all voices to be heard and hoping for our divided country to find ways to sing together in harmony. Can you suggest other pieces of music, whether autumn-themed or not, that might bring us together?

Just two days later I received responses. Many thanks to my friend and former colleague Marjorie Lee, who sent this video of Sarah Liu playing Autumn by Cécile Chaminade, a French composer. She even sent a link to the score that I could print out and said she is praying for our country to heal.

 

And thanks, too, to Nan Fridlind, my Rice classmate, who sent a link to the score of Autumn Night by Ludovico Einaudi. Nan also sent this video of Le Onde by Einaudi. The photographs are by Wendy Peach, who took them during autumn in Bright, Victoria, Australia. Wendy notes: “Although the song title means ‘The Waves’ in Italian, I think you can get the feel of autumn leaves falling, the water in a stream or brook flowing over rocks as it carries leaves with it.” So now we are blessed to have autumn pieces by composers from Britain, Russia, France and Italy and photography from Australia!

When I lived in Arlington, Virginia, my friend Kathalina and I often walked down to the Potomac River, crossed over Chain Bridge, and followed the towpath in the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. Another friend, Jean Wilbur Gleason Stromberg, also enjoyed this park and published a volume of poetry, Walk the Towpath. Here is her Milepost 3.1:

Early fall leaves

helicopter down

one by one

slowly settle

on the canal

still water mirror

dots of green red

yellow brown

as if Seurat

had been called away

leaving points behind

not yet a picture—

another month or two

and he’ll be done.