The colors of the leaves are changing quickly now.  A few are starting to fall into my lawn.  All of those stupid trees seemed like a good idea in the spring and summer when they gave me some shade from the heat of the sun.  Now I’m beginning to regret the arrangement, as I work to fill bag after bag of fallen leaves. It’s coming.  You can feel it in the crisp night air.  Some days are still warm, but the warmth is fading, and the cold winter is ahead of us.  Days are shorter and nights are stretching longer.  It can even seem a bit melancholy at times.

This mood is captured over and over again in music from a great variety of sources.  The German composer Richard Strauss included an Autumnal mood in his Vier letzte Lieder, the four last songs he composed, at age 84.  His…