“Since you went away the days grow long…and soon I’ll hear old winter’s song”. No matter how often I’ve heard it, the switch from major to minor key in “Autumn Leaves” brings an icy chill, despite the lyrics being for the most part the sort of sentimental fluff that would float off in the slightest breeze. Suddenly, I feel that cold hand on my shoulder. The grey clouds that blow over the song are enough to cast that phrase about “old winter’s song” in a Keatsian shade, you sense a recognition of mortality, the leaving of a lover (or in Keats’s case the season’s last swallows) being linked to that most final of departures. Read the rest of this post at The Liminal.
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