Charles Koechlin - Septet for wind instruments, Op. 165 (1937)

Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin (27 November 1867 – 31 December 1950), commonly known as Charles Koechlin, was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. Among his better-known works is Les Heures persanes, a set of piano pieces based on the novel Vers Ispahan by Pierre Loti and The Seven Stars Symphony, a 7-movement symphony where each movement is themed around a different film star (all Silent era stars) who were popular at the time of the piece's writing (1933).

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Septet for wind instruments, Op. 165 (1937)

For solo clarinet 0:00
I. Monodie

For flute, clarinet and bassoon 2:42
II. Pastorale

For alto saxophone, cor anglais and wind quintet
III. Intermezzo 6:48
IV. Fugue 8:41
V. Sérénité 10:31
VI. Fugue (Sur un thème de mon fils Yves) (14:21)

Manfred Pries, alto saxophone & Gerhard Stempnik, cor anglais and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet.

Koechlin was enormously prolific. He was highly eclectic in inspiration (nature, the mysterious orient, French folksong, Bachian chorale, Hellenistic culture, astronomy, Hollywood movies, etc.) and musical technique, but the expressive core of his language remained distinct from those of his contemporaries. At the start of his career, he concentrated on songs with orchestral accompaniment, few of which were performed as intended during his lifetime. A 2006 recording of a selection (Hänssler Classic CD93.159) shows he was already master of an individual impressionism deriving less from Debussy than from Berlioz and Fauré. Thereafter he concentrated on symphonic poems, chamber and instrumental works.

After World War I his continuing devotion to the symphonic poem and the large orchestra at a period when neoclassicism and small ensembles were more fashionable may have discouraged performance and acceptance of his works. His compositions include the four symphonic poems and three orchestral songs making up Livre de la jungle after Rudyard Kipling; many other symphonic poems including Le Buisson Ardent after Romain Rolland (this is a diptych of two orchestral poems, performable separately) and Le Docteur Fabricius after a novel by his uncle Charles Dollfus; three string quartets; five symphonies including a Seven Stars Symphony inspired by Hollywood; sonatas for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola and cello, and much other chamber music; many songs, over two hundred opus numbers in all; and a vast number of monodies, fugal studies, chorale harmonizations and other educational pieces. Many works remain unpublished, however.

He wrote in several styles, sometimes strict Baroque counterpoint, as in the fugue that opens his Second Symphony, and sometimes "impressionistically", as in the tone poem Au Loin, or (though in more astringent fashion) in the scherzo of his Symphony No. 2. He could go from extreme simplicity to extreme complexity of texture and harmony from work to work, or within the same work. Some of his most characteristic effects come from a very static treatment of harmony, savoring the effect of, for instance, a stacked-up series of fifths through the whole gamut of the instruments. His melodies are often long, asymmetrical and wide-ranging in tessitura. He was interested in the works of Schoenberg, some of which he quoted from memory in his treatise on orchestration. The twelve-tone technique is one of the several modern music styles parodied in the 'Jungle Book' symphonic poem Les Bandar-Log, but Koechlin also wrote a few pieces in what he described as the 'style atonal-sériel'. He was fascinated by the movies and wrote many 'imaginary' film scores and works dedicated to the Anglo-German actress Lilian Harvey, with whom he was infatuated. His Seven Stars Symphony features movements inspired by Douglas Fairbanks, Lilian Harvey, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings and Charlie Chaplin in some of their most famous film roles. He also composed an Epitaph for Jean Harlow and a suite of dances for Ginger Rogers. He was interested in using unusual instruments, notably the saxophone and the early electronic instrument the Ondes Martenot. One movement of the Second Symphony requires four of them (and has not usually been included in the few performances of the work, for that reason). He also wrote several pieces for the hunting-horn, an instrument he himself played. Koechlin orchestrated several pieces by other composers. In addition to the Fauré Pelléas et Mélisande (suite mentioned above), he orchestrated the bulk of Claude Debussy's 'legende dansée' Khamma under the composer's direction, from the piano score, and orchestrated Cole Porter's ballet Within the Quota; other works he transcribed include Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy and Chabrier's Bourrée fantasque.