Editor's Note: Part of Mark Meynell's 5&1 series on classical music. Taking a different theme for each post, the 5&1 series offers five short pieces followed by one more substantial work. The playlist choices are occasionally not found on YouTube, so alternatives are provided here.
The 23-year old poet John Keats described the fall, or as we say in these parts, the autumn, as a "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" in his masterpiece To Autumn. His wander through the countryside south-west of London inspired him; the poem bursts with nature's harvest-time profligacy and appeals to all five senses. But there is an inherent melancholy: nothing lasts, as the leaves turn, temperatures drop and nights lengthen.
The fourth and final verse opens: "Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too..." Of course, by telling us not to think of spring's songs we can't help but do so. He insists, however, that autumn has its own—the sound of 'mourning' gnats, bleating lambs and birds chirping in gardens. This is the true symphony of autumn. Then, as if in sympathetic step with the season itself, Keats would die of tuberculosis in Rome only 18 months after writing the poem. But the season's bitter-sweet abundance, colors and pathos have inspired musicians for centuries, with the result that there is more than enough to choose from this month.
1. Prelude and Song: See My Many Colour'd Field (from The Fairy-Queen, 1692)
Henry Purcell (1659-1695, English)
Roderick Williams (baritone), Gabrieli Consort, Paul McCreesh (cond.)
Purcell was a musical genius, his death a tragic loss at only 35. He created this semi-staged operatic drama not from Edmund Spenser's epic of the same name (known to Rabbit Room regulars from Rebecca Reynolds' mammoth undertaking) but Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Instead of setting the play to music, he composed 'masques' for each act. These were very popular in the seventeenth century and involved ornate if mannered music, song and dance. So here, in the 4th Act, the classical sun-god, Phoebus (often identified with Apollo) introduces the four seasons, each of whom has a moment in the spotlight. Autumn is clearly quite pleased about the varieties of color and fruit he brings.
2. 'Otoño porteño' (Autumn in Buenos Aires, 1969)
Astor Pantaléon Piazzola (1921-1992, Argentinian)
Jonathan Morton (violin & cond.), Scottish Ensemble
The season remains unchanged, but we have flown 7000 miles to the other side of the world: Argentina. Piazzola was a performer (of the concertina-like bandoneon), musical arranger and composer in his own right, renowned for transforming the traditional tango almost beyond recognition.
His Four Seasons of Buenos Aires is a case in point: despite owing some inspiration from Vivaldi, each is a tango and is scored for a cabaret band. But of course, because he lived in a different hemisphere, he gives a nod or two to Vivaldi's Winter, but includes it in his Summer! In Autumn, there is a riot of activity, color and intrigue. If you're new to Piazzola, I suspect you will never never have encountered anything quite like it before; it is certainly hard to categorise. But you will hopefully find its joie de vivre is irresistible.
3. Approach of Autumn (from Adam Zero: a one-act ballet, 1946)
Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975, English)
English Northern Philharmonia, David Lloyd-Jones (cond.)
Back into the northern hemisphere and to England again, but a generation before Piazzola. Arthur Bliss was a Londoner with an American father and English mother. He served in the First World War with distinction and spent some time in the States until the war broke out once more. The rest of his life was spent in Britain and he was prolific, in all forms of music, not least for the stage.
Adam Zero was a one-act ballet premiered in April 1946 in a bombed out London. It all gets quite 'meta', retelling the cycle of human life by means of a company of dancers creating a ballet. Adam is the principle dancer who experiences the seasons of life, only to be replaced at the end by his understudy before he dies. Autumn, as you'd expect, comes towards the end. The music evokes the mists and murk of shortening days, but the season is obviously functioning metaphorically: hence the undercurrent of foreboding at what will inevitably come to us all.
4. The Fall of the Leaf: Theme and Variations (1963)
Imogen Holst (1907-1984, English)
Steven Isserlis (cello)
We've not had much solo instrumental stuff on the 5&1 playlists so far, apart from keyboard music. So this may come as something of a challenge, but please give it a go. Bach was the great master of works for unaccompanied instruments, and there are moments in this that hint at his legacy. Imogen Holst was the only child of Gustav Holst, of The Planets fame which we have already encountered, and a musical all-rounder.
She composed this for her friend Pamela Hind O'Malley, describing it as a set of 'three short studies for solo cello on a sixteenth-century tune'. In the variations, we can at times hear the wind prising autumnal leaves free from their branches. But the key is the central movement, tinged with an aching sadness. Despite having 5 distinct sections, the whole lasts only around 9 minutes, and while strings tend to play only one line, there are all kinds of ways to add, or hint at, harmonies. This is a beautiful evocation of the season composed with astonishing economy.
5. Autumn
Ola Gjeilo (1978- , Norwegian)
The Choir of Royal Holloway, Rupert Gough (cond.)
It's about time we had some more singing. Ola Gjeilo has become highly-regarded in choral music circles far beyond his native Norway. Based now in Manhattan, Gjeilo particularly excels in writing for voice and for solo piano, relishing gorgeously scrunchy chords and atmospheric wistfulness. But then, if you lived close to the Arctic Circle, the thought of Autumn carries particular poignancy, if not heaviness. Yes, the season brings great beauty, but the further north you go, the shorter the season becomes and you are led inexorably towards permanent night.
The text here is a poem Gjeilo commissioned from his frequent collaborator, the American poet Charles Anthony Silvestri. To prompt him, he sent images of Vestmarka, a Norwegian national park close to where he grew up and in which he would go on long treks. It's a beautiful setting of a poem that even has the faintest of echoes of Keats.
Autumn Gardens
Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016, Finnish)
Helsinki Philharmonic, Vladimir Ashkenazy (cond.)
It's no surprise that other Scandinavians treasure the autumn while it lasts. Rautavaara was a Finnish composer whose music was profoundly influenced by his environment; we've met him before in his Cantus Arcticus, right back in the very first 5&1 playlist of nature-inspired music. In this 3-movement work for orchestra, his lens is focused on a garden, which becomes a microcosm for the season's impact.
Poetico: there are still traces of summer's beauty as this first movement opens. It is crafted around a theme he used in an opera to set the words 'like a butterfly in the garden of black autumn'. The music gradually gets denser before drifting without a break into...
Tranquillo: as it's title suggests, this is calmer and more atmospheric, perhaps suggesting the fading light of the high north.
Giocoso e Leggiero ('Playful and light'): those are not words traditionally associated with this time of year, but the composer seems to be making a determined effort to enjoy the moment. Shimmering strings suggest floating leaves and dappled sunlight, leading to a resounding conclusion, in what is perhaps a solemn dance to see off the last of the summer.
However, rather than trying to trace some kind of narrative or 'program' for the whole piece, allow yourself to be swept up in its arctic atmosphere.
Mark Meynell is the Director (Europe and Caribbean) of Langham Preaching. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1997 serving in several places including 9 years at All Souls Church, Langham Place, London, (during which he also served as a part-time government chaplain). Prior to that, he taught at a small seminary in Kampala, Uganda, for four years. Since 2019, he has helped to bring Hutchmoot to the UK and in 2022 completed a Doctor of Ministry (at Covenant Theological Seminary, St Louis) researching the place of the arts in cultural apologetics. Mark and his wife, Rachel, have two grown-up children, and they live in Maidenhead, Berkshire.