Starter Packs

Complete your collection with these curated titles, grouped at a special discount.

Shop Now
Sono Luminus

Songs of Orpheus

Modern Dark Contemplative Dramatic Exotic
$17.99

Details

Composer
George Crumb, Claude Debussy, Edward Grieg, Robert Spano
Artist
Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
Format
CD
Label
Sono Luminus
Released
Aug 22, 2025
Catalog #
DSL-92286
UPC
053479228604

About

At once sensual and existential, this collection of songs-composed across 125 years-meditates on nature and nostalgia, sex and love, the ephemerality of the human spirit, and the eternal, transformative power of art. These song cycles of Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, George Crumb, and Robert Spano coalesce into a testament to the limitless potency and fragility of love-both it's resplendent joys and it's tender sorrows. Despite love's transience and riskiness, the album compels us to ruminate on Rilke's witticism that "for one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks...' Each of the cycles presents us with existential questions of life and death, love and loss, but the album is structured in couplets. Debussy and Spano draw upon Ancient Greece, Grieg and Crumb draw upon enchantments of nature, the temporality of love, life, and memory. Claude Debussy's ethereal Chansons de Bilitis (1899) evokes a lusty, Grecian fever dream where the tumescence of love and desire comes to the fore. Robert Spano's Sonnets to Orpheus (2020) lends voice to Rilke's enigmatic eponymous poetry. Spano's setting of the songs-the intimate conversation between piano and soprano-"draws one voice out of two separate strings." Meanwhile, George Crumb's Three Early Songs (1947) emerge as whispered secrets, darkly-hued odes to impermanent nature-night, a flower, and wind. The songs lead us to ponder the difference between the actual and the seeming. Chansons de Bilitis is a sensual, sultry tease in more ways than one. The poetry penned by Pierre Louÿs is a literary forgery. Louÿs, in an introduction to his original poems, claimed that the verses were found in the tomb of a sixth-century (fictional) poetess named Bilitis. She was made out to be a contemporary of Sappho and the poems were written as pastiches in the style of Sapphic erotism. This deception only fueled the work's popularity. And although Debussy only sets three poems, Louÿs wrote 143 poems separated into three volumes that span scenes of pastoral youth (Book I: Bucoliques en Pamphylie), to burgeoning Lesbian-referring both to same-sex attraction and to acts associated with the isle of Lesbos-sexuality (Book II: elegies à Mytilene), and to life as a courtesan at the employ of Aphrodite (Book III: Epigrammes dans l'île de Chypre). In this way, maturation narratives-bildungsroman-form a motif throughout this album. Louÿs was inspired by sex tourism, to be blunt. At the insistence of friend and fellow writer, Andre Gide, Louÿs traveled to Algeria to indulge in sensual exoticism (and orientalism). A young Arab woman, Meriem, had come highly recommended by Gide who wrote of her and her music as something that "stupefied me like an opiate" as it "drowsily and voluptuously benumbed my thoughts." Meriem would become the muse for Chansons, which Louÿs began to draft in Algeria; the dedication of the collection reads "in memory of Meriem ben Atala." The turn of the twentieth century was rife with literary and musical games-anagrams, witticisms, forgeries, and puns. Louÿs even includes a fake scholar in the introduction to his work named G. Heim, meaning "mysterious" in German. And the title seems to me to be a play on words suggesting the feebleness, the feeblemindedness, debilite (de Bilitis) of love, sex, and the trickery of artistry. Exoticism too was par for the fin de siecle course-just think of the Orientalism of Delibes's Lakme (1883), Ravel's Sheherazade (1898/1902), and Debussy's own "Pagodas" from his piano suite, Estampes (1903). Each piece relies on coded musical identifiers that suggest otherness-nonconventional percussion instruments, incessant and layered rhythms, and sonic chinoiserie. For those sonic elements, Louÿs called upon his dear friend, Debussy, to orchestrate music to underscore his poetry. Debussy complained that the turnaround time was too short. Nevertheless, he was hard up and needed the money.

Tracklist 19 tracks

  1. 1 No. 1. La flûte de Pan 02:57
    Track
    1
    Title
    No. 1. La flûte de Pan
    Duration
    02:57
    Composer
    Claude Debussy
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  2. 2 No. 2. La chevelure 04:02
    Track
    2
    Title
    No. 2. La chevelure
    Duration
    04:02
    Composer
    Claude Debussy
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  3. 3 No. 3. Le tombeau des naïades 03:24
    Track
    3
    Title
    No. 3. Le tombeau des naïades
    Duration
    03:24
    Composer
    Claude Debussy
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  4. 4 No. 1. Da stieg ein Baum 05:38
    Track
    4
    Title
    No. 1. Da stieg ein Baum
    Duration
    05:38
    Composer
    Robert Spano
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  5. 5 No. 2. Ein Gott vermags 03:45
    Track
    5
    Title
    No. 2. Ein Gott vermags
    Duration
    03:45
    Composer
    Robert Spano
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  6. 6 No. 3. Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht 06:22
    Track
    6
    Title
    No. 3. Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht
    Duration
    06:22
    Composer
    Robert Spano
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  7. 7 No. 4. Heil dem Geist, der uns verbinden mag 04:35
    Track
    7
    Title
    No. 4. Heil dem Geist, der uns verbinden mag
    Duration
    04:35
    Composer
    Robert Spano
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  8. 8 No. 5. Stiller Freund der vielen Fernen 05:54
    Track
    8
    Title
    No. 5. Stiller Freund der vielen Fernen
    Duration
    05:54
    Composer
    Robert Spano
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  9. 9 No. 1. Night 03:02
    Track
    9
    Title
    No. 1. Night
    Duration
    03:02
    Composer
    George Crumb
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  10. 10 No. 2. Let It Be Forgotten 03:24
    Track
    10
    Title
    No. 2. Let It Be Forgotten
    Duration
    03:24
    Composer
    George Crumb
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  11. 11 No. 3. Wind Elegy 02:29
    Track
    11
    Title
    No. 3. Wind Elegy
    Duration
    02:29
    Composer
    George Crumb
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  12. 12 No. 1. Det syng (The Enticement) 03:43
    Track
    12
    Title
    No. 1. Det syng (The Enticement)
    Duration
    03:43
    Composer
    Edvard Grieg
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  13. 13 No. 2. Veslemøy (The Young Maiden) 02:57
    Track
    13
    Title
    No. 2. Veslemøy (The Young Maiden)
    Duration
    02:57
    Composer
    Edvard Grieg
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  14. 14 No. 3. Blåbær-Li (Blueberry Slope) 03:45
    Track
    14
    Title
    No. 3. Blåbær-Li (Blueberry Slope)
    Duration
    03:45
    Composer
    Edvard Grieg
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  15. 15 No. 4. Møte (The Tryst) 04:43
    Track
    15
    Title
    No. 4. Møte (The Tryst)
    Duration
    04:43
    Composer
    Edvard Grieg
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  16. 16 No. 5. Elsk (Love) 02:56
    Track
    16
    Title
    No. 5. Elsk (Love)
    Duration
    02:56
    Composer
    Edvard Grieg
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  17. 17 No. 6. Killingdans (Kidlings' Dance) 01:55
    Track
    17
    Title
    No. 6. Killingdans (Kidlings' Dance)
    Duration
    01:55
    Composer
    Edvard Grieg
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  18. 18 No. 7. Vond Dag (Hurtful Day) 02:51
    Track
    18
    Title
    No. 7. Vond Dag (Hurtful Day)
    Duration
    02:51
    Composer
    Edvard Grieg
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano
  19. 19 No. 8. Ved Gjætle-Bekken (At the Brook) 07:12
    Track
    19
    Title
    No. 8. Ved Gjætle-Bekken (At the Brook)
    Duration
    07:12
    Composer
    Edvard Grieg
    Performer
    Kelley O'Connor, Robert Spano