Cat. Nr.: 3091 552

Product: 5 CD

Price: € 49,95

Leendert de Jonge

Les Chants de Nectaire

When the French composer Charles Koechlin (Paris, November, 27, 1867 - Le Canadel, December 31, 1950) reaches his 77th year, he decides to write only monodies: independent melodies without accompaniment. His thoughts turn to Nectaire, the flute-playing gardener in Anatole France’s novel La révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels], who entertains his guests during a summer night. After a searching beginning, he develops a musical dis-course, a true musical dissertation. In the course of his improvisation he conjures up personages dwelling both in Nature and in man. During his dissertation Nectaire is both engaging and repellent, gracious but challenging. He has the ability to express human feelings in musical form and the guests are silent, as though bewitched. They feel they are listening to the muses, or else a nightingale. During that summer night Nectaire calls for emotions such as love, fear, or futile arguments (whatever for?). Of course he also plays melodies which simultaneously express both joy and sadness, for he knows the hypocrisy of the world, yet desires to make it more beautiful.
Charles Koechlin wrote the music for these imaginary melodies. The result is Les Chants de Nectaire, Opus 198, 199 and 200 for solo flute. Koechlin was not only a composer, but also a classical scholar, philosopher, architect, photographer, and above all an astronomer. The latter occupation is perhaps the reason for the sometimes extreme length of the musical lines of suspense. For to look in the universe is to look into time.
The melodies in his Chants de Nectaire are timeless; now reminiscent of Georgian chant, then of Satie, Debussy, Bach or Messiaen.
Although written for a single flute, Les Chants de Nectaire is an all-encompassing composition and a landmark in the musical world.

Tracklisting

Total duration 239 minutes

CHARLES KOECHLIN - THE SONGS OF NECTAIRE
32 pieces for flute, Opus 198

CD I
Total time 45:42
01 Préambule
02 Birth of life
03 Patterns of light
04 Clarity of mind
05 Youth of the world
06 Insights of calm intelligence....
07 ....pierce with bolts Error and Stupidity
08 Mocking laughter
09 Fun with light
10 Vain quarrels - what’s the point?
11 Tenderness
12 The lament of mankind
13 Night
14 Breaths of spring on the sea
15 Light - moderation - equilibrium
16 Love

CD II
Total time 44:39
17 Pity
18 For suffering souls
19 The garden of the muses
20 The tendrils of the vine
21 Happy hours
22 Fear
23 Idylle
24 Moonlight on the sea
25 Bursting into life
26 The desire which all worls are born of
27 Human effort
28 Thoughts in defeat
29 Evening
30 The sage’s calm
31 Funny on a sunny morning
32 Meditation on human sorrow

CHARLES KOECHLIN - THE SONGS OF NECTAIRE
In the ancient forest, Opus 199

CD III
Total time 58:03
01 In the shade, on a cool spring morning
02 The clear forest
03 Games in the clearing
04 The sacred wood
05 The fluttering of the leaves
06 Drinking in the shade, in summer
07 Nymph dance, in the sun
08 Water nymph games
09 Chill of fine mornings in the mountains
10 The goatherd
11 Faun dance
12 “Mollesque sub arbore somni....”
13 The sea whose unnumbered noises
14 Endymion the shepherd
15 The Satyre
16 “Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae”
17 The faun’s caprice
18 On the death of a cat
19 Purity of morning on the shore
20 The “happy shepherd boy”
21 Calm of evening
22 Cool morning breeze on the sea
23 “O fortunatos nimium...agricolas”
24 Bright evening
25 Spring fun in the forest
26 “Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub temine fagi”
27 Dances in the forest
28 “At secura quies...”
29 “Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse”
30 The birds are drunk....
31 Silenus
32 For the procession of Dionysos

CHARLES KOECHLIN - THE SONGS OF NECTAIRE
Prayers, dances and processions for the familiar gods, Opus 200

CD IV
Total time 44:14
01 Prayer in the Dorian mode
02 Reply to the tutelary divinity
03 Prayer of someone sick
04 Procession of maidens
05 Dance in the morning sun in the countryside
06 Procession of the youths
07 Children's prayer
08 Dances to greet the return of spring
09 Epithalames
10 Prayer of the wife whose husband has gone to war
11 Dance to greet the return of the father
12 Funeral prayer
13 Dances to celebrate happy betrothals
14 Orphan’s prayer
15 Spell to cure a sick brain
16 Tityrus thanks the Gods

CD V
Total time 47:06
17 Canticle of the philosopher gazing at the night stars
18 Dances of youths in front of the happy home
19 The master teaches his pupils the harmonious lives of the ancient sages
20 Joyful ring dance in the flowery meadows
21 Prayer to the forest sages
22 Prayer to the heath gods
23 Grandmother’s prayer
24 Grandmother’s second prayer
25 “Dance”
26 Cortège
27 Spell to drive of evil spirits
28 Dances of the familiar fauns
29 Cortège
30 Prayer to cure someone sick
31 Second prayer for cure
32 “Thanksgiving” procession