Koechlin's Les Heures persanes

Today we'll present one of the most subtle and beautiful of all instrumental works inspired by Persia, Les Heures persanes [The Persian Hours], by Charles Koechlin, composed from 1913-1919.

Charles Koechlin

Even though it is purely instrumental (in versions for piano and also for orchestra), the work and its sixteen movement titles are based on Vers Ispahan (1904), a novel by Pierre Loti, a highly regarded French author of the late 19th and early 20th century. Today, at least in the United States, neither the composer nor the author is well-known, to say the least. Listening to Les Heures persanes, however, offers a sound world that can envelop you in a rare way. The music is not truly Persian, by any

Pierre Loti

means, but Koechlin must have felt that labeling his work 'Persian' gave him license to write music that would otherwise have sounded exceedingly strange to his colleagues and his audience.
In spite of his German-sounding last name, he was French. Highly eccentric and talented, said to be a 'nature-mystic,' Koechlin and his music are well worth getting to know. Koechlin is discussed here.

More details about the piece can be found at this link.

Here are part 1, part 2, and part 3 of a YouTube offering, which presents the entirety of the orchestral version of the piece.






...Nous arrivons par le bazar des selliers, qui est le plus luxueux de la ville et ressemble à une interminable nef d'église.—Il fut construit à l'époque de la dernière splendeur de Chiraz, au milieu duXVIIIe siècle, par un régent de la Perse appelé Kerim-Khan, qui avait établi sa capitale ici même, ramenant le faste et la prospérité d'autrefois dans ces vieux murs.—C'est une longue avenue, tout en briques d'un gris d'ardoise, très haute de plafond et voûtée en série sans fin de petites coupoles; un peu de lumière y descend par des ogives ajourées; un rayon de soleil quelquefois y tombe comme une flèche d'or, tantôt sur un tapis soyeux et rare, tantôt sur une selle merveilleusement brodée, ou bien sur un groupe de femmes,—toujours fantômes noirs au petit masque blanc,—qui marchandent à voix basse des bouquets de roses. [An extract from Vers Ispahan, by Pierre Loti.]











Below is a piano version of the piece. If you start playing clip 1/16 (part one of  sixteen parts), YouTube should automatically load each of the movements in succession. Click on the YouTube logo in the lower right corner to watch the clip directly in YouTube, rather than in this blog. Please note that these clips were posted by someone calling himself 'On the Top of Damavand,' yielding

Mount Damavand

another Persian connection, since Damavand is the very large, Mount Fuji-style mountain to the east of Tehran.