A Minor Master

While working on The Great Digitization Project, I've rediscovered a minor master that I've always loved - Charles Koechlin.

Almost nobody seems to have heard about him except passionate students of French music around the turn of the 20th century.

He was long-lived (1867-1950.) In other words, from before the age to Wagner to listening to the music of Boulez.

He was no conservative. He heard it all, and had a take on it.

Trained under Fauré as a contemporary of Ravel, he took his inspirations far and wide. Everything from Bach and Kipling to Hollywood was fair game as inspiration. He loved his movies, and wrote a "Seven Star Symphony" depicting his favorite (seven) Hollywood stars in musical terms. (Garbo was a favorite.)

The music is coloristically French - post-Debussy, teeming with colorful orchestration.

There is a conservative element. He never really veered away from tonality although he did understand that revolution that Stravinsky had wrought. Instead of the highly agressive polar bitonality of the The Rite of Spring, he pushed an agenda of bitonality.

Which didn't mean he couldn't be agressive. One of the funniest pieces in classical music is his Les bandar-log (inspired by Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.) The monkeys are depicted as vicious copiers except in this case the monkeys are parodies of contemporary composers who kept aping pieces in the styles of Stravinsky and Schönberg. They get their ruthless upcommance in a very funny and musical piece.

This piece forms part of his Kipling-inspired cycle of pieces based on the The Jungle Book of which The Meditation of Purun-Bhagat stands out in its orchestration, and its anticipiation for what would become minimalism.