Autumn

It only makes sense that a season so full of beauty and change would inspire so many lovely songs. While Frank Sinatra evokes the crisp days and bustling crowds of "Autumn In New York," an older, wiser Neil Young rekindles romance under a "Harvest Moon," and Joni Mitchell hops onto the carousel of time with "The Circle Game."

Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi dedicated three movements to capturing autumn's essence in his "Concerto in F Major, RV 293" —better known as the "Autumn" concerto from The Four Seasons. Centuries later, ABBA employed their particular brand of baroque pop to capture summer's end in "When All Is Said and Done."

The strangely uplifting autumnal melancholy that settles on the branches of windblown trees and curls around the soul like bonfire smoke can be found in the alt-country harmonies of the Be Good Tanyas ("Scattered Leaves"), the guitar and wraithlike synth of Bruce Cockburn's "Fall," and the shuffling electronica of Arno Elias.

As far as music goes, summer has its hot, sunny, party-day appeal, while spring has its flings with new beginnings, and winter has its cold and lonely nights. But autumn? Autumn is the season that really inspires. It means a lot of things to a lot of different artists, and it takes myriad musical forms. Our Essentials playlist is packed with the best of autumn's musical expressions, from rock (Guns N' Roses, Green Day) to jazz (Sarah Vaughan & Clifford Brown, Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong) to folk and pop (Julie Doiron, Gordon Lightfoot) and beyond.