Charles KOECHLIN (1867 - 1950) 27 /11 - 1/12/17

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koechlin

This is such a good composer! Every time I hear one of his works, I keep telling myself that I must explore ( ) more of it ... and then never manage to get round to doing so!

Donald Macleod presents with his usual self-effacing skill - but a couple of annoyingly inaccurate clichés about "Impressionism" and Koechlin's "looking forward" to the style of Les Six (as if Debussy and Chabrier hadn't already done that!) stained the script. These aside, this week looks set to be another ear-opener.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nj800

[Serial_Apologist]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koechlin

This is such a good composer! Every time I hear one of his works, I keep telling myself that I must explore ( ) more of it ... and then never manage to get round to doing so!

Donald Macleod presents with his usual self-effacing skill - but a couple of annoyingly inaccurate clichés about "Impressionism" and Koechlin's "looking forward" to the style of Les Six (as if Debussy and Chabrier hadn't already done that!) stained the script. These aside, this week looks set to be another ear-opener.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nj800

This is a repeat - one well worth waiting for - but it hasn't stopped Radio Times from printing this composer's dates as 1856 to 1945

I would think Koechlin in style and aesthetic to be a lot closer to Les Six than Debussy, I have to say. But wait! The week holds many surprises in store!

[Richard Barrett]

I would think Koechlin in style and aesthetic to be a lot closer to Les Six than Debussy, I have to say.

That depends on what you're listening to, but his most original he's some distance away from either, especially in his orchestral writing which shows a skill and imagination with orchestration which is second to none. His chamber music on the other hand is often insipid to the point of being unlistenable, for me anyway. I always get annoyed by descriptions of some artist or other as being a "missing link" between others (JC Bach comes in for this a lot as well). While we are all the product of our historical and social circumstances, this kind of triangulation seems to me much too simplistic and dismissive.

[MickyD]

Quelle coincidence! France Musique is also doing five programmes on Koechlin this week - today's first one was very good indeed. I like the website presentation, with a pic of each CD cover - would be nice if R3 could do the same.

https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/arabesques/arabesques-du-lundi-27-novembre-2017-38253

[Stanfordian]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koechlin

This is such a good composer! Every time I hear one of his works, I keep telling myself that I must explore ( ) more of it ... and then never manage to get round to doing so!

Donald Macleod presents with his usual self-effacing skill - but a couple of annoyingly inaccurate clichés about "Impressionism" and Koechlin's "looking forward" to the style of Les Six (as if Debussy and Chabrier hadn't already done that!) stained the script. These aside, this week looks set to be another ear-opener.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nj800

An excellent composer and much underrated. His chamber works and small scale piano pieces especially appeal to my taste i.e. Dances for Ginger Rogers etc.

[Lat-Literal]

I agree with the positive comments and will be listening to COTW this week. Sad to say, when I started a thread about Koechlin in the Composers section, there were no takers!

Re him being a precursor to Les Six, I think yes in a way - but there were nearly 50 years of artistic overlap, especially significant given that he became increasingly prolific.

Also I'd suggest that there is quite a lot of distance musically between, say, Honegger and Durey or Milhaud and Tailleferre. Actually between Auric and Poulenc too. All of them!

[Bryn]

I agree with the positive comments and will be listening to COTW this week. Sad to say, when I started a thread about Koechlin in the Composers section, there were no takers!

That's one of the problems of accessing this forum via the "New Posts" route. Easy to miss threads if you don't look by for a couple of days. Apart from the usual Jungle Book and Seven Stars I rather enjoy the Complete Music for Saxophone on Brilliant Classics.

[Lat-Literal]

That's one of the problems of accessing this forum via the "New Posts" route. Easy to miss threads if you don't look by for a couple of days. Apart from the usual Jungle Book and Seven Stars I rather enjoy the Complete Music for Saxophone on Brilliant Classics.

[Serial_Apologist]

I agree with the positive comments and will be listening to COTW this week. Sad to say, when I started a thread about Koechlin in the Composers section, there were no takers!

Re him being a precursor to Les Six, I think yes in a way - but there were nearly 50 years of artistic overlap, especially significant given that he became increasingly prolific.

Also I'd suggest that there is quite a lot of distance musically between, say, Honegger and Durey or Milhaud and Tailleferre. Actually between Auric and Poulenc too. All of them!

Yes, very good point indeed - it was one of the reasons why the group fragmented as quickly as it did.

[Lat-Literal]

Yes, very good point indeed - it was one of the reasons why the group fragmented as quickly as it did.

Thank you - and yes, they only formally existed in 1920/1. The point is underpinned but only to an extent - a fair amount of it is flute - on L'Album des Six, label Hyperion, which I own. Intriguingly, Tansman was invited by Honegger and Milhaud to join Les Six but declined as he wanted creative independence. I am not sure that he really needed to worry on that score. Also, I wonder about the distinctions sometimes. Ferney mentions Debussy and Chabrier but I'd also hear in Duparc and later Cras something of what was to come. Ditto even Renie who was very conservative. There is an oddly modern 20th Century quality in all of these people if one wants to hear them in that way although not, I think, in Chausson who died in 1899.

Until this year, it has been difficult to find much in the way of Durey at a reasonable price but then he was viewed as "the orphan". The songs on Hyperion (performers - Francois Le Roux and Graham Johnson) were always quite pricy and there is a Chamber Music disc on Mandala which is astronomical in that respect, perhaps because it is an import. But "Durey Rediscovered: The Unpublished Song Manuscripts of Louis Durey" was released in May on New Focus Records. While I don't yet own it, it may well be one of the key releases of 2017.

Anyhow, that's Durey. Do we know if Koechlin was aware of Grainger's "Jungle Book"?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Lats mentions Duparc and Chausson - I heard a similar sort of approach to harmony and orchestral writing in the Music that was played in today's first programme much more prominently than Honegger or Milhaud. Magnard was there, too - and the Roussel of the First Symphony - and even, in one of the orchestral songs, a touch of Canteloube!

Looking forward to the remaining programmes.

[Lat-Literal]

Lats mentions Duparc and Chausson - I heard a similar sort of approach to harmony and orchestral writing in the Music that was played in today's first programme much more prominently than Honegger or Milhaud. Magnard was there, too - and the Roussel of the First Symphony - and even, in one of the orchestral songs, a touch of Canteloube!

Looking forward to the remaining programmes.

Yes ferney.

Your knowledge of composition is in an entirely different league from mine.

I do some facts, vague contrasts and, slightly ironically here, impressionism - but I very much "get" the Magnard!

(nb An interesting selection of people on the forum at 5am........it must be a no sleep sort of night)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Your knowledge of composition is in an entirely different league from mine.

That's one of the great things about the Forum - people with "different leagues" of knowledge and enthusiasms sharing these with everyone else. I didn't remember ever hearing of Jean Cras before reading your #10 (although looking at his Wiki entry, I think S_A has mentioned him and his work on the Thread he started ) and I try to listen to as many of the links to Music I don't know that get posted here as time allows.

[Lat-Literal]

That's one of the great things about the Forum - people with "different leagues" of knowledge and enthusiasms sharing these with everyone else. I didn't remember ever hearing of Jean Cras before reading your #10 (although looking at his Wiki entry, I think S_A has mentioned him and his work on the Thread he started ) and I try to listen to as many of the links to Music I don't know that get posted here as time allows.

Yes indeed on point 1.

One of my favourites. The most money I've ever spent on a classical music disc was probably for Cras. The music is very impressionistic - the sea mainly as he was a senior naval officer : few "do" the sea better in my humble opinion - although Wiki describes his later work as in "a more acerbic style comparable to that of Bartók, though formally close to Franck".

Duparc - another one of my favourites - described him as "the son of my soul". Duparc had ceased composing in 1885 when suffering from a (sort of mental) illness diagnosed as "neurasthenia" and on subsequently going almost blind he sadly destroyed most of his work. It was, predictably, to Cras who he wrote in 1922 on binning an incomplete opera :

"Having lived for 25 years in a splendid dream, the whole idea of [musical] representation has become – I repeat to you – repugnant. The other reason for this destruction, which I do not regret, was the complete moral transformation that God imposed on me 20 years ago and which, in a single minute, obliterated all of my past life. Since then, [my opera] Roussalka, not having any connection with my new life, should no longer exist."

Cras's daughter, Colette, was a concert pianist for whom her father wrote a concerto. She married Tansman, no less, so there again that "on the fringes of Les Six" comes in.

I've checked back on these facts but actually I had acquired them because I have quite an interest in French composers and some affinity with them.

(Alain, Casadesus, Demessieux, Holmes, Le Flem, Renie..........these are among the less than obvious of my discoveries and I am for them all)

I can more easily comprehend them and their timelines than the Austrians, Germans, Czechs, Russians etc.

[Serial_Apologist]

This is embarrassing, because until just now, I'd never heard of Cras!

My Tuesdays are always busy: thanks for another new name - I'll look him up this afternoon!