Koechlin died in 1950, having just turned 83, with his most imposing works—and many of his most immediately accessible smaller pieces—unpublished, out of print, and unheard. Through the good offices of Paul Collaer, Radio Brussels broadcast the complete multi-movement Jungle Book in 1946—a beginning lacking the crucial follow-up, for Koechlin's bewilderingly varied, unique sound world (ranging from the stunning extended tumult of La Course de Printemps to the serene austerity of La Méditation de Purun-Bhagat) settles on the ear, paying large aural dividends, only with repeated hearing. Much of his best music remained unknown for decades. Though three movements of the Seven Stars Symphony were broadcast on French Radio in 1944, the entire work was not heard until 1969. The triumphant orchestral Offrande musicale sur le nom de BACH, the upshot of a lifetime's preoccupation with counterpoint, composed in 1942, received its premiere in 1973. The glistening symphonic nocturne, Vers la Voûte étoilée, completed in 1933 and revised in 1939, was heard for the first time in preparation for a recording in 2003. And so on. Similar stories could be told about his most ingratiating chamber works. Meanwhile, two unrepresentative songs—from an extraordinarily rich but wholly forgotten harvest of song—kept his name alive. Singers continued to include "Le Thé" (Op. 1/3) and "Si tu le veux" in their programs, and anthologists to include them in collections of French song, where Koechlin was accorded a place beside such minor figures as Hahn, Paladihle, and Rhené-Baton. Even the resilience of Si tu le veux owed to a misunderstanding. Composed originally in August 1894 as a setting of Silvestre's "Chanson de Bertrade" ("En Avignon, pays d'amour"), and used again in the Prix de Rome cantata Endymion in December, publication by Hachette in 1898 changed the complexion of this liltingly charming piece, as Koechlin noted in a sarcastic aside in an autobiographical study (written in the third person) in 1939. "He takes no heed that the public seeks to impose its taste on him by a persistent preference for Si tu le veux, a pleasant improvisation originally written to charming words from "Grisélidis" by Armand Silvestre, but adapted by the publisher to other verses [by Maurice de Marsan] whose banal sentimentality delights those listeners who dream of moonlit kisses in the movies!" Si tu le veux—"O do you care, beloved, to go with me at day's end..."—was launched by Mme Büsser on May 23, 1899, at a Soirée Dubufé.

© Adrian Corleonis, Rovi