Autumn is the time of change – leaves change colour and change position from high on a tree to down on the ground, we change from sun-loving (or hating) to bundled up and wind-blown, and our blue skies turn dark. Autumn Rain. Nothing is quite so cold after summer’s light showers, and yet nothing washes things quite so clean.

We’ll start with a melancholic anticipation. Writing for a unique combination of clarinet, cello, and mandolin, composer Patricia Morehead evokes a world populated by lyrical instruments (the dark sky? The floating leaves?) and the plucked sound of the mandolin (the anticipation of the sharp, cold raindrops to come?).

Patricia Morehead: Just Before the Rain (Christie Miller, clarinet; Elizabeth Start, cello; Dimitris Marinos, mandolin)

It’s going to rain and we’ve taken shelter indoors. Above us, the skies darken, and drops start to fall.

Jan Vardoen: Høst Autumn Fall – Rain on a Tin Roof (Nils Petter Molvaer, trumpet; Mapping Oceans, Ensemble)

The rain can leave us sad and pondering. Our enforced stay under cover gives an opportunity for thinking and reflecting about what we’ll do when we can escape again. Finally, we’re resolved.

Shelter of the Porch (photo by esywlkr)

Lisan Wang: Sonatine – II. After the Rain (Yiming Zhang, piano)

In his Autumn Rain, Lars Hannibal looks at the autumn rain as a sensual experience. The guitar is the falling rain, there’s 4-note falling bass line (traditionally used in laments) and a recorder to provide the accumulated drips that gather and rush down the window. The text reviews the different kinds of autumn rain: mild in September with a wind that rustles the fallen leaves, ‘so cold’ in October, and ‘so harsh’ in November before turning to ice and endangering the trees. Finally, the sunlight is gone, and the birds have flown south.

Autumn Rain in the Park (photo by wallpapers.com)

Lars Hannibal: Autumn Rain (Amalie Hannibal Petri, vocals; Michala Petri, recorder; Agnete Hannibal Petri, cello; Lars Hannibal, guitar)

Inspired by a poem by D.H. Lawrence, Philip Wilcher’s Autumn Rain takes up on Lawrence’s imagery ‘in falling seeds of rain, the seeds of heaven on my face’, to create a world of filled in sight, sound, and touch with a ‘gentle film of rain, the occasional gathering of clouds, the distant clap of thunder’.

Autumn rain (photo by Lily Tjenderasa Williams)

Phillip Wilcher: Autumn Rain (Jeanell Carrigan, piano)

French composer Marcel Tournier hears the autumn rain singing in his work for harp, Ce que chante la pluie d’automne (What the autumn rain sings).

The Floating Leaf

Marcel Tournier: Ce que chante la pluie d’automne (What the autumn rain sings) (Jutta Zoff, harp)

Off the coast of Yokohama lies the small island of Jogashima. Only 4 kilometres in size around its coast, the small island is largely unbuilt on with a central spine of walking trails. It works as a barrier island off the coast and is marked on each end with a lighthouse.

The houses huddling under the hill on the landward side of Jogashima

Kōsaku Yamada: Jogashima no ame (Rain on Jogashima) (arr. Sota Aoki for piano) (Nanako Sugiura, piano)

Finnish composer Ilmari Hannikainen hears the autumn rain as a melancholic sound.

Ilmari Hannikainen: 5 Pieces, Op. 20: No. 1. Syyssateita (Autumn Rain) (Gail Olszewski, piano)

In Greece, autumn is the time when the temperature finally cools. The rains come, and after the rain, we delight in the newly washed world around us.

Washed leaves (image by waferboard)

Christos Tsitsaros: Autumn Sketches – After the Rain (Christos Tsitsaros, piano)

We’ll close with a wonderful evocation of the first autumn showers with Yehudi Menuhin and Stéphane Grappelli supplying two very different violin interpretations.

Harry Warren: Melody for Two: September in the Rain (arr. M. Harris) (Yehudi Menuhin, violin; Stéphane Grappelli, violin; Max Harris, cond.)

Autumn rains are the signal of the delights of summer coming to a close and the responsibilities of autumn and fall approaching. You can see them as points of joy, washing the world, or as a start to the indoor season.

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