Folksongs of the Auvergne

Lo fiolairé - The spinner (Book 3)

Lou Boussu - The hunchback (Book 3)

Le Delaïssádo - The abandoned (Book 2)

Malurous qu’o uno fenno - Unfortunate is he who has a wife (Book 3)

Although it has given few composers to the world - Emmanuel Chabrier is the only one of any significance - the Auvergne is a region rich in folksong. Situated at the heart of the Massif Central in the middle of the southern half of France, it is a mountainous country where life is traditionally hard and which, because of its backward rural economy, remained largely unspoiled until well into the present century. Joseph Canteloube, who was born in Annonay in the neighbouring region of the Rhône Valley, started collecting folksongs in the Auvergne in 1895, when the folk culture and the language of the region (nearer to Catalan than standard French) were still more or less intact. The first four books of his Chants d’Auvergne - comprising twenty-two songs, all in his own sophisticated arrangements - were first performed between 1925 and 1932 and proved far more popular than any of his original works. A fifth book (of eight songs), published in 1955, was less successful.

Canteloube’s main source of folksong was the shepherds and shepherdesses who, left to themselves in the mountains for months on end, had plenty of time to develop the art of singing of their own experience to melodies based on the traditional modes of the region. There are lullabies, comic dialogues, and the particularly evocative Baïlèro derived from the echoing call of one distant shepherd to another. Above all, there is a whole range of love songs covering everything from innocent flirtatiousness to cynical disillusion. Lo fiolairé is the reflective song of a shepherdess who expresses her happiness in a recurring and enterprisingly colourful kind of cadence. If not quite politically correct by our standards, Lou Boussu is an entertaining dialogue of pathos and pertness offering much scope for comic characterization to both the pianist and the singer. La delaïssado, on the other hand, is the lament of an abandoned shepherdess, the decorative inflections of the melodic line formed quite naturally by the weight of her grief. But if the cheerful sentiments of Malurous qu’o uno fenno are to believed, she is better off without him.

Gerald Larner©

Three Bourrées (from Book 1):

L’aio dè rotso - Spring water

Ound’ anorèn gorda - Where will we find our flock?

Obai, din lou Limouzi - Down below in Limousin

Bailèro - Shepherd’s song (Book 1)

Tchut, Tchut - Hush, hush (Book 4)

Le Delaïssádo - The abandoned (Book 2)

Oi, ayai - Oh, ah (Book 4)

Lou Coucout - The cuckoo (Book 4)

Although it has given few composers to the world - Emmanuel Chabrier is the only one of any significance - the Auvergne is a region rich in folksong. Situated at the heart of the Massif Central in the middle of the southern half of France, it is a generally mountainous country where life was traditionally hard and which, because of its backward rural economy, remained largely unspoiled until well into the present century. Joseph Canteloube, who was born in Annonay in the neighbouring region of the Rhône Valley, started collecting folksongs in the Auvergne in 1895, when the language of the region (nearer to Catalan than standard French) and its folk culture were still more or less intact. The first four books of his Chants d’Auvergne - comprising twenty-two songs, all in his own sophisticated arrangements for the concert hall - were first performed between 1925 and 1932 and proved far more popular than any of his original compositions. A fifth book (of eight songs) published in 1955, was less successful.

A speciality of the region is the bourrée: as the sequence of three flirtatious little pieces at the beginning of this selection so charmingly demonstrate, the bourrée d’Auvergne can just as well be in triple time as in the duple time conventionally associated with that dance. Canteloube was by no means always as concerned to respect the rural sound of the original as he is the shepherd-pipe improvisations (on oboe and clarinet respectively) between the Three Bourrées. Baïlèro, the earliest and much the most popular of his folksong arrangements, though melodically true to its source in Cantal, is not so much an evocation of shepherds calling to each other across the river as a rhapsody to the countryside where it originated.

After Tchut, tchut, which is in the same cheerful mode as the Three Bourrées, there is another highly developed arrangement in La delaïssado, an abandoned shepherdess’s lament introduced by grieving cor anglais and bassoon solos. Oï, ayaï and Lou Coucout are both affectionate caricatures - the one a delightful study of the cunning Margaret and her obedient Pierre in two contrasting tempi, the other a brilliantly orchestrated and wittily harmonised salute to the cuckoo.

Gerald Larner©