Autumn Leaves

Autumn Leaves is a famous and often-recorded song. The original version was the 1945 French song Les feuilles mortes (The Dead Leaves) with music by Joseph Kosma and lyrics by Jacques Prévert. Yves Montand, with Irène Joachim, performed Les feuilles mortes in the 1946 movie Les Portes de la Nuit (Gates of the Night). In 1947, Johnny Mercer wrote an English version, and Jo Stafford was among the first to perform it. Autumn Leaves has become a pop/jazz standard in French and in English, both as an instrumental piece and as a vocal.

Joseph Kosma (1905 - 1969) was a Hungarian-French composer of Jewish background. He wrote many notable scores, particularly the score for the 1949 movie Le sang des bêtes (
Blood of the Beasts).

Jacques Prévert (1900 - 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter whose poems are popular in the French-speaking world. He wrote the script for the classic 1945 French movie Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise).  

Johnny Mercer (1909 - 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a co-founder of Capitol Records. Between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s, many of the songs he wrote and performed were among the most popular hits of the time. He received nineteen Academy Award nominations, and won four Academy Awards.


Version 1  2009

Jane's tutorial skipped the 2-page intro

Version 2   2016

Clayderman Version Tutorial

Sheetmusic from