Maurice Ravel
Alborada del gracioso
Alborada del gracioso (The Jester's Aubade) is the fourth of the five movements of Maurice Ravel's piano suite Miroirs, written in 1905. Dedicated to fellow Les Apaches member Michel-Dimitri
Title#
The Spanish title has no exact translation. Alborada, or dawn in English, has various musical meanings: a song for a wedding day; a Galician folk tune; and a type of rhythmically free music played on bagpipes and drum. But as usually construed for Ravel’s piece it is an announcement of dawn, a sunrise song, an aubade. Gracioso has roots in the troubadour and trouvère traditions: he was a figure of Spanish comedy, the grotesque lover, an amusingly entertaining person, a servant who comments on the actions of his superiors. Accordingly the whole title is rendered variously as Morning Song of the Clown, Morning Song of the Buffoon or The Jester’s Aubade.
Background#
In the years 1904–05, as he was finishing his String Quartet, Ravel composed Miroirs (Mirrors), a suite of five short piano pieces. He later orchestrated two of them: the orchestral version of “Une Barque sur l’océan” (A Barque on the Ocean) came out in 1906; more than a decade elapsed before Ravel orchestrated the other, the “Alborada del gracioso”. Diaghilev commissioned Ravel to orchestrate the Alborada (and the Chabrier piece, the Menuet pompeux) for a production of the ballet, retitled Les jardins d’Aranjuez, at the Alhambra Theatre, London in 1919. Before the ballet opened in London the orchestral Alborada was premiered in Paris on 17 May 1919 by the Pasdeloup Orchestra conducted by Rhené-Baton.
Music#
The music consists of two sections of lively dance music, separated by a rhapsodic, extended song. The opening is marked assez vif (fairly quick), ♩ = 92. Like the piano original, the piece begins with imitations of guitar music. In the orchestral version they are produced by the first harp, played close to the sound board, along with precisely arranged pizzicato violins and violas. To represent the sounds of the extreme treble of the piano original, the accompaniment to the bassoon melody is scored for 24-part strings, some instruments bowed, others plucked, and deploying a range of harmonics, multiple stops and sul tasto effects. The music makes a gradual return to the original tempo; Ravel added four bars to the original score here, making use of woodwind tremolos. and “a grand and glorious racket”.
Instrumentation#
The piece is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, crotales, triangle, Basque drum, castanets, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, xylophone, two harps, and strings.
Recordings#
The first recording of the orchestral Alborada del gracioso was made by the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, conducted by Otto Klemperer in 1926. Recordings recommended by other critics include: In 2015 the conductor François-Xavier Roth and the orchestra Les Siècles, which specialises in historically informed performance, released a recording of the Alborada using original or reproduction instruments of the period.
- Composer
- Maurice Ravel