Maurice Ravel on Music Theory Print

Alborada del gracioso

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Boléro

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

The work’s creation was set in motion by a commission from the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who asked Ravel for an orchestral transcription of six pieces from Isaac Albéniz’s set of piano pieces, Iberia. While working on the transcription, Ravel was informed that Spanish conductor Enrique Fernández Arbós had already orchestrated the movements, and that copyright law prevented any other arrangement from being made. When Arbós heard of this, he said he would happily waive his rights and allow Ravel to orchestrate the pieces. But Ravel decided to orchestrate one of his own works instead, then changed his mind and decided to compose a completely new piece based on the bolero, a Spanish dance musical form. While on vacation at St Jean-de-Luz, Ravel went to the piano and played a melody with one finger to his friend Gustave Samazeuilh, saying, “Don’t you think this theme has an insistent quality? I’m going to try and repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can.” Idries Shah wrote that the main theme is adapted from a melody composed for and used in Sufi training.

Chansons madécasses

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

Scored for mezzo-soprano or baritone, flute, cello and piano, and dedicated to the American musician and philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the set is usually performed complete as a true song cycle although this was not the composer’s designation. The songs are: *“Nahandove” (incipit: “Nahandove, ô belle Nahandove”) *“Aoua!” (incipit: “Aoua! méfiez-vous des blancs” Ow! Beware of white people ) *“Il est doux” (incipit: “Il est doux de se coucher durant la chaleur” It is sweet to lie down during the heat )

Daphnis et Chloé

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition and premiere#

Ravel began to write the score in 1909 after a commission from impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes, completing it some months before the premiere of the staged work. This took place at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 8 June 1912, with sets designed by Léon Bakst, choreography by Fokine, and the Orchestre Colonne conducted by Pierre Monteux. Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky danced the shepherdess and goatherd.

Don Quichotte à Dulcinée

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

This was the last of Maurice Ravel’s compositions, commissioned by the celebrated film director G. W. Pabst for a cinema version of Don Quixote starring the legendary bass Fyodor Chaliapin. The score was to include four songs (one more than the final version) along with background music for several episodes. As Ravel worked on the project in 1932, however, he suffered the increasingly disabling effects of Pick’s disease, a cerebral-neurological condition that gradually robbed him of motor skills and memory while afflicting him with periods of aphasia. How much Pabst knew about Ravel’s illness is unclear; but as 1932 wore on with no immediate prospect of receiving all the music, the director fired Ravel and hired Jacques Ibert for the job. In fact, Pabst had simultaneously commissioned several composers, so that he could choose at will. When the film, completed in 1933, reached theaters with Ibert’s music, Ravel sued the producers, but never obtained a judgement. In the end, Ravel wrote only three songs, both in piano-accompanied and orchestrated versions; the very ill Ravel was assisted at least in notating the orchestration by Lucien Garban and Manuel Rosenthal. He completed them in 1933 thanks to extensive secretarial help provided by friends and assistants (his condition soon progressed so far that he could not write his name). The first public performance, given by baritone Martial Singher in December 1934 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, featured the orchestral version, with an ensemble conducted by Paul Paray. For the lusty opening “Chanson Romanesque”, Ravel chose the guajira dance-pattern, exploiting the quirks of its alternating and meters for word-painting, and enlivening it by sometimes garnishing the with a clashing dissonance. Sensuality subtly increases with a turn to the major, and the final rhapsodizing on the beloved (“O Dulcinée”) deepens the emotional perspective of all that has gone before. Parallel harmonies create the atmosphere of medieval Christian liturgy in the prayer of “Chanson épique.” Here the oft-reiterated asymmetrical dance-rhythm of the zortzico imparts a sustained urgency unusual in slow music. Against the manic jota that dominates the “Chanson à boire”, a tipsy Don Quixote revels in flamenco vocalizing and unleashes peals of laughter as keyboard flourishes suggest the bubbling and sparkling of wine.

Gaspard de la nuit

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The name “Gaspard” is derived from its original Persian form, denoting “the man in charge of the royal treasures”: “Gaspard of the Night” or the treasurer of the night thus creates allusions to someone in charge of all that is jewel-like, dark, mysterious, perhaps even morose. Of the work, Ravel himself said: “Gaspard has been a devil in coming, but that is only logical since it was he who is the author of the poems. My ambition is to say with notes what a poet expresses with words.” Aloysius Bertrand, author of Gaspard de la Nuit (1842), introduces his collection by attributing them to a mysterious old man met in a park in Dijon, who lent him the book. When he goes in search of M. Gaspard to return the volume, he asks, “ ‘Tell me where M. Gaspard de la Nuit may be found.’ ‘He is in hell, provided that he isn’t somewhere else’, comes the reply. ‘Ah! I am beginning to understand! What! Gaspard de la Nuit must be…?’ the poet continues. ‘Ah! Yes… the devil!’ his informant responds. ‘Thank you, !… If Gaspard de la Nuit is in hell, may he roast there. I shall publish his book.

Histoires naturelles

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Content#

The five songs are: *Le paon (The peacock) **The peacock is described as waiting in his finery for the peahen he is to marry. She does not appear, but his vanity makes him confident that she will come tomorrow. *Le grillon (The cricket) **The cricket returns to his home at the end of the day and obsessively puts it in order, before burrowing deep into the earth. *Le cygne (The swan) **The swan is distracted by reflections in the water, confusing the image of his own neck for a woman’s arm. Each time he plunges his beak into the water vainly fishing for reflections he brings out a worm, and so grows fat. *Le martin-pêcheur (The kingfisher) **A fisherman is pleased and proud that a beautiful kingfisher has just perched on his fishing rod before eventually flying on. *La pintade (The guinea fowl) **The guinea fowl is ugly and belligerent, attacking the hens and even the turkey in the farmyard. She occasionally gives them some respite when she leaves the yard to lay an egg out of sight, in the countryside. Of the poems Ravel said, “the direct, clear language and the profound, hidden poetry of Jules Renard’s works tempted me for a long time.” Renard recorded in his diary:

In G Major

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Choreography#

In G Major is set to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, which the composer said “uses certain effects borrowed from jazz, but only in moderation.” The ballet is performed by two soloists, who dance the central pas de deux that takes place in the second movement, and a corps de ballet consisting of six men and six women. Author Nancy Reynolds described, In In G Major, matching in spirit Ravel’s unaccustomed “borrowings” from jazz (as the composer called them), Robbins produced a rather clichéd but nonetheless skillful and entertaining work, with a creamy-smooth central pas de deux. Particularly in the outer movements, both music and dance gave the impression of having been seen or heard somewhere before. In Robbins’s extensive quotations of Broadway-style material… he seemed often to reach for the too-obvious solution, possibly in keeping with Ravel’s idea that a concerto should be “light-hearted and brilliant and not aim at profundity or dramatic effects.” Robbins’ biographer Amanda Vaill described the central pas de deux, “Drifting and slow, it was full of hesitations: first the girl step toward the boy, then retreats; then he advances and retreats; when they come together, he holds her as she unfolds herself, becomes known to him, and their duet is full of parallel partnering alternating with beautiful exultant lifts.”

Introduction and Allegro (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

To showcase its new chromatic harp, the Pleyel company commissioned Claude Debussy in 1904 to write his Danses sacrée et profane for harp and orchestra. The rival Érard company responded by commissioning Maurice Ravel to write a piece to display the expressive range of its double-action pedal harp. For Ravel, composition was generally slow and painstaking, but he wrote the Introduction and Allegro at what for him was breakneck speed, to complete it before embarking on a boating holiday with friends. He wrote at the time:

Jeux d'eau (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and first performances#

In 1901, Maurice Ravel was aged 26 and had yet to make an impression on the French musical scene. He had failed to win any prizes as a student at the Paris Conservatoire and was expelled on that account. As a former student he was permitted to attend the classes of his teacher Gabriel Fauré, who thought highly of him and encouraged him. Ravel dedicated Jeux d’eau and his String Quartet “à mon cher maître Gabriel Fauré”. Jeux d’eau represented what Ravel’s biographer Gerald Larner calls “a sudden surge in Ravel’s imagination” after the mostly unremarkable compositions that preceded it. The piece was partly inspired by Franz Liszt’s Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este (from his Années de pèlerinage). Another inspiration may have been the poem “Fête d’eaux” by Ravel’s friend Henri de Régnier. It contains the line “Dieu fluvial riant de l’eau qui le chatouille” (“river god laughing at the water that tickles him”), which at the composer’s request the poet inscribed on Ravel’s manuscript, and is the epigraph to the printed score. Ravel gave the first performance of the work at a gathering of the avant-garde artistic group Les Apaches of which he was a member. The pianist Vlado Perlemuter quoted one of those present as saying, “There was a strange fire, a whole panoply of subtleties and vibrations which none of us could previously have imagined”. Perlemuter commented that the piece “opens up new horizons in piano technique, especially if one remembers that Debussy’s Jardins sous la pluie was not written until two years later, in 1903”. The work was published by Eugène Demets in 1901. It was quickly denounced by musical conservatives, including Camille Saint-Saëns − who dismissed it as “total cacophony” − and most of the faculty of the Conservatoire. The first public performance was given by the pianist Ricardo Viñes in a concert presented by the Société nationale de musique on 5 April 1902, at which Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte was also premiered. Pierre Lalo, the music critic of Le Temps (who later became persistently hostile to Ravel) was favourably impressed. After commending Viñes’s “singular virtuosity and delicacy” he praised the two Ravel works as “orderly, composed with great clarity and measure, while keeping the same refinement in harmony”.

L'enfant et les sortilèges

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

During World War I, the Opéra de Paris director Jacques Rouché asked Colette, whom he met at one of Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux’s salons, to provide the text for a fairy ballet. Colette originally wrote the story under the title Divertissements pour ma fille. After Colette chose Ravel to set the text to music, a copy was sent to him in 1916 while he was still serving in the war; however, the mailed script was lost. In 1917, Ravel finally received a copy and agreed to compose the score, replying to Colette, “I would like to compose this, but I have no daughter”. It was eventually agreed that the composition would be more of an operetta, but retain the ballet dance elements. Colette accordingly revised the text and developed a libretto. Ravel stopped composition of the work in the spring of 1920, suffering from physical exhaustion and poor health. In the next few years he was compelled to complete the work by Raoul Gunsbourg, director of the Monte Carlo Opera, who had insisted Ravel write a sequel to L’Heure espagnole. By this time Ravel had become newly inspired by the stage presentations of American musicals and revues by composers such as George Gershwin. Ravel’s work on the composition began to incorporate the musical style of these productions. By early 1925 he had finally completed it. Colette, who had believed that the work would never be completed, expressed her extreme pleasure, believing that her modest writing had been raised beyond its initial scope. Now officially under the title of L’enfant et les sortilèges, the first performance took place on 21 March 1925 in Monte Carlo, conducted by Victor de Sabata, with ballet sequences choreographed by George Balanchine. Ravel said of the premiere production: Our work requires an extraordinary production: the roles are numerous, and the phantasmagoria is constant. Following the principles of American operetta, dancing is continually and intimately intermingled with the action. Now the Monte Carlo Opera possesses a wonderful troupe of Russian dancers, marvelously directed by a prodigious ballet master, M. Balanchine. … And let’s not forget an essential element, the orchestra.

L'heure espagnole

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Performance history#

Ravel was closely involved in every aspect of the production as it was prepared for its premiere by the Opéra-Comique at the Salle Favart in Paris. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique on 19 May 1911, in a double-bill with Thérèse by Jules Massenet; after the initial nine performances it was not revived. The Paris Opéra presented it on 5 December 1921 with Fanny Heldy as Concepción, and it enjoyed more success. The opera returned to the Opéra-Comique in 1945 where it continued in the repertoire. The opera was performed for the first time in Canada at the 1961 Montreal Festivals.

La valse

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Creation and meaning#

The idea of La valse began first with the title “Vienne”, then Wien (French and German for “Vienna”, respectively) as early as 1906, when Ravel intended to orchestrate a piece in tribute to the waltz form and to Johann Strauss II. An earlier influence was the waltz (Fête polonaise) from Emmanuel Chabrier’s opera Le roi malgré lui. In Ravel’s output, a precursor to La valse is his 1911 Valses nobles et sentimentales, which contains a motif that Ravel reused in the later work. After his service in the French Army, Ravel returned to his original idea of the symphonic poem Wien. He described his attraction to waltz rhythm as follows, to Jean Marnold, while writing La valse: You know my intense attraction to these wonderful rhythms and that I value the joie de vivre expressed in the dance much more deeply than Franckist puritanism. After hearing a two-piano reduction performed by Ravel and Marcelle Meyer, Diaghilev called it a “masterpiece” but “not a ballet. It’s a portrait of ballet”. Hurt by the comment, Ravel ended the relationship. La valse became a popular concert work and when the two men met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev’s hand. Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel, but friends persuaded him to recant. They never met again. The ballet was premiered in Antwerp in 1926 by the Royal Flemish Opera Ballet and was produced by the Ballets Ida Rubinstein in 1928 and 1931, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska. The music was also used for ballets of the same title, one in 1951 by George Balanchine, who had made dances for Diaghilev, and one by Frederick Ashton in 1958, at the premiere of which Francis Poulenc complimented Ashton on what he considered the first successful interpretation of Ravel’s intentions for the music. Ravel described La valse with the following preface to the score: Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees at letter A an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo letter B. Set in an imperial court, about 1855.

La Valse (Balanchine)

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Choreography#

The first part of the ballet is set to Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, which features eight waltzes, with the first used as an overture. In the eighth waltz, a ballerina in white enters and dances. A man then enters. Dance critic Richard Buckle described, “They do backbends and at first seem not to know each other. They dance with a ceremonial and slightly depraved elegance.” At the end of the waltz, the man lifts the ballerina and they exit the stage. Tanaquil Le Clercq, who originated the ballerina role, recalled, “the atmosphere was lovely, it was like going to a party. There wasn’t anything terribly hard in the variation, and yet you could work within what you had and make it different. Balanchine said to think of German-style contractions for it – a feeling for ‘plastique.’” The La Valse section follows. At first, dancers search for each other under the spotlight. Balanchine wrote, “All the dancers seem to be waiting for the waltz to emerge through the weird music that holds it in abeyance.” As the stage brightens, a corps de ballet of eight men and sixteen women waltzes, and the fifth waltz couple also returns. Then the ballerina in white and her partner enters and dances. Balanchine described, “Their dance is slow at first; the ballerina’s movements are retarded and she seeks to move more freely as the waltz attempts to resume its previous intensity.” But, as the music intensifies, “The girl turns with despairing speed to her partner’s arms.” Then, a figure of Death, in black, emerge alongside his servant. The women kneels before him while the men looks away. The white ballerina is terrified but attracted to Death. He forces her to put on black necklace, gloves and dress, as she becomes more fascinated, before presenting her with a bouquet. As the music goes faster, Death forces the ballerina to dance faster and faster, “almost mindlessly”, as Le Clercq described. She ultimately dies, while Death disappears. Le Clercq remarked, “the dramatic mood grew completely out of the steps.” The corps de ballet resumes their waltzing. The ballerina’s partner carries her dead body, before she is lifted by a group of men, who turn around and around at the centre of the stage. In 1974, Balanchine made a revision to the ballet, so Death would make a brief appearance in the Eighth Waltz. Balanchine told dancer Francisco Moncion that he had “always wanted to have the figure of Death somewhere in the first section as a premonition.” Therefore, as Moncion put it, “there is a special place for him in the Eighth Waltz. The figure appears from nowhere in the spotlight, suddenly and only for a moment, just as she is going off, and it’s very frightening.”

Le Tombeau de Couperin

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

The movements are as follows:

Reception#

Written after the death of Ravel’s mother in 1917 and of friends who died in the First World War, Le Tombeau de Couperin is a light-hearted, and sometimes reflective work rather than a sombre one that Ravel explained in response to criticism saying, “The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence.” The first performance of the original piano version was given on 11 April 1919 by Marguerite Long, in the Salle Gaveau in Paris. Long was the widow of Joseph de Marliave, to whom the last movement of the piece, the Toccata, is dedicated.

Le Tombeau de Couperin (ballet)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Choreography#

Le Tombeau de Couperin features eight couples divided into two groups, called quadrilles, that dances separately. Balanchine wrote that the ballet “doesn’t say anything beyond the combination of these dancers moving to Ravel’s lovely score.” Dance critic Richard Buckle described, “The mood is both pastoral and elegiac.” Author Nancy Reynolds found that the ballet “did not observe the overtones of lament” in the score, but “retained the aura of formal dances” through the use of couples and geometric formations.

Ma mère l'Oye

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Piano versions#

Ravel originally wrote Ma mère l’Oye as a piano duet for the children of his friends Ida and , Mimie and Jean, ages 6 and 7. Ravel dedicated this work for four hands to the children (just as he had dedicated an earlier work, Sonatine, to their parents). Jeanne Leleu (age 11) and Geneviève Durony (age 14 (10 by another source )) premiered the work at the first concert of the Société musicale indépendante on 20 April 1910. Ma mère l’Oye bears witness to the composer’s fondness—he remained a bachelor and childless—for “childlike” themes, a predilection also found later in L’enfant et les sortilèges (1925). Ravel’s friend Jacques Charlot transcribed the piece for solo piano the same year as it was published (1910); the first movement of Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin was dedicated to Charlot’s memory after his death in World War I. Both piano versions bear the subtitle “cinq pièces enfantines” (five children’s pieces). The five pieces are: # Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant: Lent (Pavane of Sleeping Beauty) # Petit Poucet: Très modéré (Little Tom Thumb / Hop-o’-My-Thumb) # Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes: Mouvement de marche (Little Ugly Girl, Empress of the Pagodas) # Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête: Mouvement de valse très modéré (Conversation of Beauty and the Beast) # Le jardin féerique: Lent et grave (The Fairy Garden) Sleeping Beauty and Little Tom Thumb are based on the tales of Charles Perrault, while Little Ugly Girl, Empress of the Pagodas is inspired by a tale (The Green Serpent) by Perrault’s “rival” Madame d’Aulnoy. Beauty and the Beast is based upon the version by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. The origin of The Fairy Garden is not entirely known, although the ballet version interprets this as Sleeping Beauty being awakened in the garden by her prince. On several of the scores, Ravel included quotes to indicate the characters and plot points he is trying to invoke. For example, for the second piece, he wrote: Ravel did not arrange these new orchestral movements for piano four-hands, but this was instead done by Lucien Garban in 1919 (Prélude et Danse du rouet et scène) .

Marguerita (Louis Prima song)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Critical reception#

Billboard favorably reviewed the recording (Majestic 1100, coupled with “Bridget O’Brien”) in its issue from January 18, 1947.

Track listing#

78 rpm (Majestic 1100)

Menuet antique

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

External links#

Menuet Antique: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project

Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Description#

The piece is only 54 bars long and lasts for about a minute and a half. The theme is based on Haydn’s own name as a five-note motif. The letter H represents B natural, A and D representing their respective pitches, Y as D natural and N as G natural. In the score, the use of this motif is marked using their letters including several inverted and retrograde versions.

Miroirs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Around 1900, Maurice Ravel joined a group of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians referred to as Les Apaches or “hooligans”, a term coined by Ricardo Viñes to refer to his band of “artistic outcasts”. To pay tribute to his fellow artists, Ravel began composing Miroirs in 1904 and finished it the following year. It was first published by Eugène Demets in 1906. The third and fourth movements were subsequently orchestrated by Ravel, while the fifth was orchestrated by Percy Grainger, among others.

Mother Goose (ballet)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Original#

Muriel Aasen
Delia Peters
Tracy Bennett
Deborah Koolish
Colleen Neary
Richard Hoskinson
Matthew Giordano
Jay Jolley
Daniel Duell

References#

Playbill, NYCB, Thursday, May 15, 2008
Repertory Week, NYCB, Spring Season, 2008 repertory, week 3

Reviews#

NY Times review, Jennifer Dunning, April 29, 1983
NY Times review, Jack Anderson, January 6, 1983
NY Times review, Anna Kisselgoff, June 11, 1990
NY Times review, Jennifer Dunning, June 27, 1991
NY Times review, Jennifer Dunning, February 15, 1992
NY Times review, Gia Kourlas, May 17, 2008

Pavane pour une infante défunte

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Ravel described the piece as “an evocation of a pavane that a little princess might, in former times, have danced at the Spanish court”. This antique miniature is not meant to pay tribute to any particular princess from history, but rather expresses a nostalgic enthusiasm for Spanish customs and sensibilities, which Ravel shared with many of his contemporaries (most notably Debussy and Albéniz) and which is evident in some of his other works such as the Rapsodie espagnole and the Boléro. Ravel dedicated the Pavane to his patron, the Princesse de Polignac, and he probably performed the work at the princess’s home on several occasions. It was first published by Eugène Demets in 1900, but it attracted little attention until the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes gave the first performance on 5 April 1902. The work soon became very popular, although Ravel came to think of it as “poor in form” and unduly influenced by the music of Chabrier. In early 1912, Ravel reviewed another pianist’s performance of the piece, commenting: “By an ironic coincidence, the first work about which I am called to report happens to be my own Pavane pour une Infante défunte. I do not feel in the least embarrassed to talk about it; it is sufficiently old to let the composer give it up to the critic. From so far, I do not see its merits any more; but, alas! I can see its defects very well: the influence of Chabrier, which is too obvious, and the rather poor form. In my belief, the remarkable interpretation contributed much toward the success of this timorous, incomplete work.” Ravel intended the piece to be played extremely slowly – more slowly than almost any modern interpretation, according to his biographer Benjamin Ivry. The critic Émile Vuillermoz complained that Ravel’s playing of the work was “unutterably slow”. However, the composer was not impressed by interpretations that plodded. After a performance by Charles Oulmont, Ravel mentioned to him that the piece was called “Pavane for a dead princess”, not “dead pavane for a princess”. When asked by the composer-conductor Manoah Leide-Tedesco how he arrived at the title Pavane pour une infante défunte, Ravel smiled coyly and replied, “Do not be surprised, that title has nothing to do with the composition. I simply liked the sound of those words and I put them there, c’est tout”. However, Ravel also stated that the piece depicted a pavane as it would be danced by an Infanta found in a painting by Diego Velázquez. When Ravel published his orchestrated version of the Pavane in 1910, he gave the lead melody to the horn, and specified a non-generic instrument: the score calls for “2 Cors simples en sol” (two hand-horns in G). The first gramophone recording of the Pavane was made in 1921 in Paris. Ravel himself made a piano roll recording of the piece in 1922.

Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition and premiere#

In preparing for composition, Ravel studied several pieces written for one-handed piano, including Camille Saint-Saëns’s Six Études pour la main gauche (Six Études for the Left Hand) (Op. 135), Leopold Godowsky’s transcription for the left hand of Frédéric Chopin’s Etudes (Opp. 10 and 25), Carl Czerny’s Ecole de la main gauche (School of the Left Hand) (Op. 399), 24 études pour la main gauche (Op. 718), Charles-Valentin Alkan’s Fantaisie in A major (Op. 76 No. 1), and Alexander Scriabin’s Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand (Op. 9). Paul Wittgenstein gave the premiere with Robert Heger and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on 5 January 1932; Ravel had first offered the premiere to Arturo Toscanini, who declined. The first French pianist to perform the work was Jacques Février, chosen by Ravel.

Piano Concerto in G major (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and first performance#

The concerto was Ravel’s penultimate composition. He had contemplated a piano concerto, based on Basque themes, in 1906; he returned to the idea in 1913, but abandoned work on the piece in 1914. Fifteen years elapsed before he turned once more to the idea of writing a concerto. He began sketching it in 1929 but throughout his career he had been a slow, painstaking worker, and it was nearly three years before the concerto was finished. He was obliged to put it to one side while he worked to a deadline to write another concerto, the D major, for the left hand, commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein. The biographer Arbie Orenstein writes that while touring the US in 1928, Ravel had been “impressed by its jazz, Negro spirituals and the excellence of its orchestras”. Jazz had been popular in Paris since the start of the decade: Ravel had first heard, and enjoyed, it in 1921, and its influence is heard in the violin sonata, completed in 1927, and in the D major piano concerto. The Basque theme mooted in 1906 and 1913 was not wholly abandoned. His colleague Gustave Samazeuilh believed that Ravel drew on his earlier ideas for the outer movements of the G major concerto, and Orenstein notes a Basque influence in the opening theme of the work. In an interview with the music critic Pierre Leroi, published in October 1931, Ravel said: He had intended to be the soloist in the first public performance of the new work, but fatigue, poor health and pressure of work led him to offer the premiere to Marguerite Long, to whom he dedicated the concerto. Long, who was known for her performances of the works of Fauré and Debussy had earlier asked Ravel for a new work. She received the completed score on 11 November 1931, and played the concerto at the Salle Pleyel on 14 January 1932, with Ravel conducting the Orchestre Lamoureux. The first North American performances were given on 22 April 1932, in Boston and Philadelphia.

Piano Trio (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Ravel had been planning to write a trio for at least six years before beginning work in earnest in March 1914. At the outset, Ravel remarked to his pupil Maurice Delage, “I’ve written my trio. Now all I need are the themes.” While initial progress on the Trio was slow, the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 spurred on Ravel to finish the work so that he could enlist in the army. A few days after France’s entry into the war, Ravel wrote again to Maurice Delage: “Yes, I am working on the Trio with the sureness and lucidity of a madman.” By September he had finished it, writing to Igor Stravinsky, “The idea that I should be leaving at once made me get through five months’ work in five weeks! My Trio is finished.” In October, he was accepted as a nurse’s aide by the Army, and in March 1916 he became a volunteer truck driver for the 13th Artillery Regiment.

Poèmes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Track listing#

#Ravel Shéhérazade: I. “Asie” 11:02 #Shéhérazade: II. “La Flûte enchantée” 3:32 #Shéhérazade: III. “L’Indifférent” 4:14 #Messiaen: Poèmes pour Mi: I. “Action de grâces” 5:58 #Poèmes pour Mi: II. “Paysage” 2:00 #Poèmes pour Mi: III. “La Maison” 1:55 #Poèmes pour Mi: IV. “Epouvante” 2:53 #Poèmes pour Mi: V. “L’Épouse” 3:00 #Poèmes pour Mi: VI. “Ta voix” 3:15 #Poèmes pour Mi: VII. “Les Deux Guerriers” 1:40 #Poèmes pour Mi: VIII. “Le Collier” 4:21 #Poèmes pour Mi: IX. “Prière exaucée” 3:11 #Henri Dutilleux Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou: I. “II n’y avait que des troncs déchirés” 2:19 #Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou: II. “J’ai rêvé que je vous portais entre mes bras” 5:30 #Dutilleux Le temps l’horloge: “Le temps l’horloge” 1:43 #Le temps l’horloge: “Le Masque” 4:25 #Le temps l’horloge: “Le Dernier poème” 2:06 #Le temps l’horloge: “Interlude” 1:20 #Le temps l’horloge: “Enivrez-vous” 4:39 The Orchestre national de France, conducted by Seiji Ozawa, accompanied Le temps l’horloge. Alan Gilbert conducted the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France on all other tracks.

Rapsodie espagnole

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The genesis of the Rapsodie was a Habanera, for two pianos, which Ravel wrote in 1895. It was not published as a separate piece, and in 1907 he composed three companion pieces. A two-piano version was completed by October of that year, and the suite was fully orchestrated the following February. At about this time there was a distinctly Spanish tone to Ravel’s output, perhaps reflecting his own Spanish ancestry. His opera L’heure espagnole was completed in 1907, as was the song “Vocalise-Etude en forme de habanera”. In the interval between the composition of the original Habanera and the completion of the four-movement Rapsodie, Claude Debussy had published a piano suite, Estampes (1903), of which the middle section, “Soirée dans Grenade”, had a Spanish theme. The work was soon taken up internationally. Henry Wood gave the British premiere in October 1909 to a capacity audience at the Proms, and the following month the work was first given in New York.

Shéhérazade (Frederica von Stade recording)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Recording#

The album was recorded digitally in Symphony Hall, Boston on 8 October 1979 (tracks 1–3) and on 8 April 1980 (tracks 4–7), and in the CBS 30th Street Studio, New York City on 10 November 1979 (tracks 8–10).

Cover art#

The cover of the album was designed by Christopher Austopchuk under the art direction of Henrietta Condak, and features a photograph of von Stade taken by Valérie Clément.

Reviews#

Alan Blyth reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in July 1981, comparing von Stade’s performance of Chansons madécasses with a version sung by Janet Baker, and comparing her performance of Shéhérazade with versions sung by Baker, Régine Crespin and Jessye Norman. Shéhérazade, he wrote, was usually sung by a soprano, but, like Baker before her, Frederica von Stade had demonstrated that the cycle could be successfully performed by a mezzo-soprano too. The only point at which the work’s tessitura had challenged her was the climax of “Asie”, where her tone had blanched at Ravel’s taxing high B flat. This said, her interpretations had their disappointments. The timbre of her voice and the volume and feeling of her singing were all insufficiently variegated. Her reading of the Hebrew songs lacked “earthiness”, and although she conveyed some of the “primitive elements” in the Chansons madécasses, she failed “to hint at the fierceness in such a song as ‘Aoua!’”. Steane returned to the album in Gramophone in January 1998, reviewing a compilation CD which coupled von Stade’s Shéhérazade with her later recordings of Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été and Claude Debussy’s La damoiselle élue. He had become fond of von Stade’s singing, he wrote, because she “brought to everything, but especially the French repertoire, a personal touch which was partly a matter of timbre, partly of style, partly a fusion of both, evoking a kind of affectionate sadness, exactly the mood for ‘L’indifférent’”. There was no denying that when she sang a passage that was particularly high or particularly loud, her voice no longer sounded as fresh as it had done in her youth. But for the most part, her Shéhérazade was fine, exemplified in “L’indifférent” by “the caress (an exquisitely gentle portamento) in the ‘séduisante’ and the forlornly wistful invitation ‘Entre’”. Patrick O’Connor reviewed the album in Gramophone in June 2004 in a survey of the Shéhérazade discography. “Von Stade”, he wrote, “sounds almost too nice and friendly, like Cherubino embarking on a prank.” David Shengold mentioned the album in Opera News in December 2016 when reviewing a box set of von Stade’s Columbia recordings

Shéhérazade (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Shéhérazade overture#

, written in 1898 but unpublished during the composer’s lifetime (it was only published in 1975), is a work for orchestra planned as the overture for an opera of the same name. It was first performed at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique on 27 May 1899, conducted by the composer. It had a mixed reception, with boos mingling with applause from the audience, and unflattering reviews from the critics. One described the piece as “a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian School” and called Ravel a “mediocrely gifted debutant… who will perhaps become something if not someone in about ten years, if he works hard.” This critic was “Willy”, Henri Gauthier-Villars, who later became an admirer of Ravel. The composer assimilated Willy’s criticism, describing the overture as “a clumsy botch-up”, and recognising that it was “quite heavily dominated by the influence of Russian music” (assez fortement dominé par l’influence de la musique russe). A programme note for the first performance, unsigned, but thought to be by the composer, reads: The playing time of the piece is about 13 minutes.

Sonatine (ballet)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Choreography#

In his book Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, Balanchine described the ballet, “The pianist and the dancers are on stage together when the curtain goes up on the ballet. The pianist begins to play; the girl and the boy stand up and listen. They like what they hear, apparently, for they begin to move to it, following its line, and gradually becoming imbued with its spirit.”

Production#

Balanchine decided that for French composer Maurice Ravel’s centenary in 1975, the New York City Ballet would hold the Ravel Festival to honor him. The festival featured sixteen premieres. While some were large productions, others, including Sonatine, were much smaller productions, which were “a few minutes long, simply using Ravel’s music and making what we could of it.” Two French-born principal dancers, Violette Verdy and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, were chosen to originate the two roles in the ballet. Verdy in particular had not created roles for Balanchine for several years prior to Sonatine.

Sonatine (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Ravel wrote the first movement of the Sonatine for a competition sponsored by the Weekly Critical Review magazine after being encouraged by a close friend who was a contributor to that publication. The competition requirement was the composition of the first movement of a piano sonatina no longer than 75 bars, with the prize being 100 francs. In 1941, the journal Music & Letters printed the article “When Ravel Composed to Order” by Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi. Calvocoressi discussed how he supposedly encouraged Ravel to write the piece in response to a competition posted in the Paris Weekly Critical Review. of G. Henle Verlag found the original article in the Review published in three March 1903 editions. The original manuscript that Ravel submitted had the text (by Verla) written and struck out, replaced with . Ravel submitted the piece under a pseudonym and chose an anagram of his name. The Sonatine was first performed fully in Lyon on 10 March 1906 by Paule de Lestang. Shortly afterwards the piece received a Paris premiere, where it was played by Gabriel Grovlez. Ravel dedicated the work to and ; he later dedicated his Ma mère l’Oye suite to their children.

String Quartet (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Ravel attended the Paris Conservatoire, but his unconventional ideas had incurred the displeasure of its ultra-conservative director Théodore Dubois and some other faculty members. His friend and teacher Gabriel Fauré continued to encourage and advise him, and Ravel made continual efforts to win the country’s top musical award, the Prix de Rome, in the face of resistance from the Conservatoire regime. By 1904, it was becoming clear to the musical public that Ravel was the outstanding French composer of his generation. Among his works by that date were the piano pieces Pavane pour une infante défunte and Jeux d’eau, and 1904 saw the premieres of his orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade and the String Quartet. The quartet has superficial resemblances to Debussy’s String Quartet, written ten years earlier. Debussy approved of his younger colleague’s work, and sent him an encouraging letter. The structure of Ravel’s quartet is modelled on Debussy’s, but where Debussy’s music is, in Arbie Orenstein’s words, “effusive, uninhibited, and open ing up fresh paths”, Ravel’s displays emotional reticence, innovation within traditional forms, and unrivalled technical mastery. Ravel followed a direction he described as “opposite to that of Debussy’s symbolism”, abandoning “the vagueness and formlessness of the early French impressionists in favour of a return to classic standards.” The quartet was premiered by the Heymann Quartet at a concert of the Société nationale de musique on 5 March 1904. Its dedicatee, Fauré, attended the performance but was not greatly taken with the piece. Critics were divided on its merits. Pierre Lalo, already a staunch opponent of Ravel, dismissed it as derivative (“it offers an incredible resemblance to the music of M. Debussy”) but Jean Marnold of the Mercure de France praised the work and described Ravel as “one of the masters of tomorrow”. The work had its London premiere in 1908 (the reviewer in The Musical Times found the music “chiefly remarkable for vagueness of significance, incoherence, and weird harmonic eccentricities”) and its German premiere in Berlin in 1910. By 1914, the work was so well established that a London critic was able to compare performances by the Parisian String Quartet with those of British players in consecutive months. The quartet has remained, in Orenstein’s phrase, “a standard work in the chamber music repertory”.

Tout est lumière

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Ravel composed in 1901 while studying at the Conservatoire de Paris, where his teachers were , Pessard and Fauré. It was written as an entry to the Prix de Rome competition. The prize, established in 1803 and given annually, came with a scholarship stay at the Villa Medici in Rome for two to three years and afterwards further studies in Germany. In the first round, the students had to present a fugue and a chorus; those selected by the jury had to compose a cantata about a given text for the second round. Ravel applied for the prize five times, first in 1900. In 1901, he submitted in the first round, which earned him a spot in the second round. Ravel also took part in the competition in 1902, 1903 and 1905, but never achieved the first prize. For , Ravel set a text from Hugo’s poem collection Les Feuilles d’automne. He scored the work for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra. Like his other entries to the competition, the piece remained unpublished.

Trois Chansons (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Ravel composed the Trois Chansons in response to World War I, beginning the work in December 1914, when he was in Paris waiting to be drafted. He was determined to fight for his country. In November, he took daily driving lessons, aiming to join a supply department, and passed the test in December. He then began to write the first of three songs, which was published as the central one, adding the other two by February 1915. He wrote in a letter to a friend, : Ravel reacted to the war with texts and music reminiscent of traditional French chansons of the 16th century. He wrote the texts himself in the spirit of popular rhymes. He dedicated the three songs to three people who might help him with the enlisting, “Nicolette” to Tristan Klingsor, who was connected to the military, “Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis” to Paul Painlevé, a mathematician and socialist politician who was to become minister of war in 1917, and “Ronde” to Sophie Clemenceau, née Szepz, the wife of Paul Clemenceau. It took eight months until Ravel was enlisted in March 1915, with help from Painlevé. The Chansons were published by Éditions Durand in 1916, and were premiered on 11 October 1917, performed by a choral ensemble assembled by Jane Bathori, conducted by Louis Aubert, at Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. The work is catalogued as No. 69 in the list of compositions by Maurice Ravel established by musicologist Marcel Marnat. The Chansons are Ravel’s only composition for a cappella choir. Ravel made an arrangement, M 69a, for medium voice and piano.

Trois poèmes de Mallarmé

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Maurice Ravel had a predilection for the poetry of Mallarmé. In an interview with the New York Times in the late 1920s, he said: In 1913, the first complete edition of Mallarmé’s poems was published. Ravel set three of his poems the same year, in different cities that refer to main places in his life with family and friends: Placet futile was completed in Paris, Surgi in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, where his parents lived, and Soupir in Clarens, Switzerland, where he was able to meet again with Stravinsky. The dates of composition follow the order of execution of the three poems: the manuscript of Soupir was completed on 2 April 1913, Placet futile in May, and Surgi… in August.

Two Hebrew Songs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The first song is a setting of the Kaddish, the second is “L’énigme éternelle” (“The Eternal Enigma”). In line with the Five Popular Greek Melodies, the Two Hebrew Melodies were composed from traditional songs (words and melody) in 1914. The piece consists of two songs: #Kaddisch — Slow, a long piece in Aramaic language #The Eternal Riddle — Tranquillo, a short piece in Yiddish language The average combined length of the two songs in performance is about six minutes.

Tzigane

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

In the early 1920s, Ravel had been planning a piece for violin and piano for his closest female friend, Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. Around the same time Ravel became acquainted with Hungarian violinist d’Arányi when she played his Sonata for Violin and Cello with Hans Kindler in London at a private soirée, and afterwards regaled the composer with a selection of folk-tunes from her country until 5 in the morning. In the ensuing two years Jourdan-Morhange retired from playing due to a chronic illness. Ravel put aside the sonata he had intended for Jourdan-Morhange and was inspired to write a virtuoso piece that “could not be anything but Hungarian”. During composition, Ravel consulted with both Jourdan-Morhange and d’Arányi on the violin figuration, studied the Paganini Caprices, and studied Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies that were supplied to him by Lucien Garban. and also created a version of the piano score noted for luthéal accompaniment. The autograph manuscript for the orchestrated version is held by the Morgan Library & Museum. The name of the piece is derived from the generic European term for “gypsy” (in French: gitan, tsigane or tzigane rather than the Hungarian cigány) although it does not use any authentic Gypsy melodies.

Valses nobles et sentimentales (Ravel)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition and background#

Ravel was intrigued by the waltz genre. By 1906, he had started composing what later would become La valse, in which he tried to epitomise all the genre encompassed. In 1911, prior to the 1920 publication of La valse, he published the piano version of his suite of eight Valses nobles et sentimentales. The work was premièred on 9 May 1911 by its dedicatee Louis Aubert at a recital of new works whose composers were not identified. This recital was sponsored by the Société musicale indépendante, to promote the works of more adventurous composers, without “burdening” critics with the attached labels of authorship. The idea was proposed by composer Charles Koechlin. This was in theory supposed to encourage the critics to evaluate what they actually heard rather than simply judging the piece by the name of the composer. The collection of pieces was not well received. When the votes were tallied, the nominated composers included Erik Satie, Charles Koechlin, Vincent d’Indy and even Zoltán Kodály, but “a minute majority,” Ravel recalled, “ascribed the paternity of the Valses to me.” The rest of the concert included works by Antoine Mariotte, Léo Sachs, Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht, Henri Büsser, Édouard Mignan, Hector Fraggi, Lucien Wurmser and François Couperin. The following year an orchestration of the Valses was published. This work indicated that the composer wanted to create a ‘clearer’ orchestral sound than had been the case for the preceding Ma mère l’Oye. The British premiere was on 25 September 1913 at the Promenade Concerts, under the baton of Henry Wood. The orchestrated ballet version of the Valses nobles et sentimentales was named Adélaïde, ou le langage des fleurs (Adelaide: or, The Language of Flowers). There is a striking resemblance between this story and the plot of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata based on the novel and play La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils.