The Musical Leaves of Autumn: A Short Playlist

Enjoy music to match the autumn landscape. Cat Rooney

The changing seasons of the year have always inspired artists, just as they tend to refresh us all. In music, the seasons have inspired great popular songs and classical compositions alike. As far as the classical composers, Antonio Vivaldi, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Joseph Haydn, Alexander Glazunov, Vaughan Williams, and several modern composers titled one of their compositions “The Seasons,” or “The Four Seasons,” or some other variant.

For now, let us consider a handful of popular and classical compositions devoted to autumn, each as differently hued as the season’s leaves.

‘Autumn Leaves’ by Jozsef Kozma

It’s hard to think of a more poignant popular ballad than “Autumn Leaves,” whose first version was in French (“Les Feuilles Mortes”). Hungarian composer Jozsef Kozma (1905–1969) wrote it in 1945 after moving to France in the 1930s. During World War II, he was put under house arrest by the Nazis near the Mediterranean coast of France and forbidden to compose, but he enjoyed many musical successes in France thereafter, including this song.