Riding to Olwen

Joseph Canteloube (1879-1957) was a French composer, musicologist, and was born into a family with deep roots in the Auvergne region of France. He studied piano from the age of six with Amélie Doetzer, a friend of Frédéric Chopin. He began studying at the Schola Cantorum in 1907 in Paris, where he became close friends with fellow composer and student Déodat de Séverac. In 1925, Canteloube founded a group called La Bourrée with several young Auvergnats in Paris who were eager to publicize the folklore and the beauty of their home region. Canteloube himself believed that ‘peasant songs often rise to the level of purest art in terms of feeling and expression, if not in form’.

Canteloube took more than thirty years (1924 to 1955) to complete the compilation of his most admired and famous collection of songs, Chants d'Auvergne. These passionate songs reflect the landscapes of the Auvergne in lush orchestral colors and have enabled French folklore and rustic melodies to become better known. The best known of the songs is the shepherd’s song Baïlèro.