Program Notes on Each Song
________________________________
Ballade de la reine morte d’aimer
About the Work
Ravel, age 18, had already been studying piano at the Conservatoire de Paris for four years by the time he wrote this song. He had written several other works prior to this in his composition lessons with Charles-René before entering the Conservatoire, but they were never published and are lost today. This song, along with Sérénade grotesque (also 1893) for solo piano, was his earliest published composition. The song contains none of the sweeping waves of notes to be found in his later compositions, but is still undoubtedly identifiable as Ravel due to the consistency of texture, slow harmonic rhythm, and lack of strong cadences.
A Closer Listen
The song begins with a carefully paced half diminished chord imitating a heartbeat, before splitting away slightly and introducing the first melody of the piece just before the singer begins. For the entire first half of the song, we still feel this same heartbeat chord underneath all the melodic material and text describing the queen and the poet who loved her. Finally, at the midway point, the music shifts to an elongated, then fully harmonized version of the very first piano melody, as the text describes the Queen’s death. For the final section, the piano imitates the bells referenced in the text with the large bells in the bass and the small bells in the treble with a harmonically rich and flowing section. For the last phrase, a final explicit reminder that the Queen has died, the song ends the way it started, with a return to the same slowly fading heartbeat chords.
Un grand sommeil noir
About the Work
By age 20, Ravel had developed a reputation for having an aversion to practicing piano, and as such couldn’t keep up with colleagues such as Viñes and Cortot. After three consecutive years of not winning any prizes for piano, he was expelled from the Conservatoire de Paris, a well-known and expected consequence of such a failure. Ravel decided to focus his efforts on composing before reapplying to the Conservatoire, with this song being one of the fruits of those labors.
A Closer Listen
This is one of the stranger songs in Ravel’s output, though it fits the text well. The final verse of the poem seems to inspire the mood for the entire song, with the slow-rocking cradle being represented by the constant block-chord piano ostinato. It has almost no melodic material whatsoever; even the singer drones at the very bottom of their range about the long black sleep for the entire first verse. The second verse is a slow build into a sudden high-range scream, and the final verse a slow descent back into the chillingly low range we started in.
Sainte
About the Work
Ravel held the poet for Sainte, Stéphane Mallarmé, in very high regard. He also wrote the texts to Ravel’s much more famous Trois poèmes de Mallarmé, written in 1913 and scored for voice and chamber ensemble. Later in life, Ravel spoke of Mallarmé’s poetry in an interview with the New York Times, calling him “the only great French poet, since he has made the French language poetic, which was not intended for poetry.” Considering this, it is surprising Ravel didn’t set more of Mallarmé’s poems to music; Sainte is the only song for piano and voice by Mallarmé. Ravel dedicated Sainte to Madame Edmond Bonniot née Mallarmé, Stéphane’s daughter.
A Closer Listen
There are four instruments referenced in the text of this poem; the viol, the flute, the lute, and the harp. Through the song, the piano imitates all of them. At the beginning, we get the harp or lute imitation with the simple block chords, where we can imagine the gentle plucking of strings. For the second stanza, we add the low viol (could be a modern day viola or cello) in the pedal tones in the bass, and finally the flute with a beautiful high melody for the final half of the song. Interestingly, the song was actually performed with voice, harp, cello, and flute at Carnegie Hall in 1960.
Chanson du rouet
About the Work
In 1897 Ravel was readmitted to the Conservatoire on compositional merit, and began studying composition with Gabriel Fauré and counterpoint with André Gedalge. Chanson du rouet was written within his first year in Fauré’s class, presumably as an assignment, since Leconte de Lisle was an older poet that Fauré had set poems from before.
A Closer Listen
The text describes the narrator’s love for the spinning wheel, which is represented by the constant running notes in the piano. For the first two verses, both hands participate fully in the 16th note pattern, with occasional melodies in the top of the right hand and pedal tones in the low left hand. In the final verse, the tempo slows, and while the spinning wheel pattern continues in the right hand, the left hand imitates the spinning wheel’s foot pedal. For the final two phrases, both hands return to the faster tempo.
Si morne!
About the Work
Another song written during Ravel’s first year back at the Conservatoire, Si morne! shows the beginning of Ravel’s experimentation with thicker and darker harmonies. The text is depressing, with similarities to Un grand sommeil noir, but the musical style is more varied from section to section. Verhaeren, the Belgian poet who wrote Si morne!, was known for being one of the founders of the Symbolism movement within poetry, along with Verlaine and Mallarmé, who we already know Ravel admired.
A Closer Listen
The song is pervaded by melodies and harmonies based on whole tone scales, with only occasional half steps used to emphasize certain phrases. The texture in the piano and the range of the singer vary greatly throughout the different sections, as do the dynamic levels of the song. In the first section we get thick chords in the piano with difficult intervallic leaps for the voice, and the second section contrasts with a slightly lighter harmonic feel and an easier melody for the singer. That doesn’t last; before long we build up to the climax of the song, in the high range for both singer and piano and volume instructions that translate essentially to “loud,” then “louder,” and finally “maximum loud.” The remainder of the song is a beautiful harp imitation in the piano, before cooling down for a relatively peaceful ending.
2 Épigrammes de Clément Marot
About the Work
Ravel wrote these songs at different times, the second one first in 1896 while he was away from the Conservatoire, and the first one in 1899 while studying with Fauré. Also in 1899, he wrote one of his most famous works for solo piano, Pavane pour une infante défunte. There is a similarity between the works in their treatment of harmonic progression; the music is unusually tonal and almost has real cadences. When publishing the set he decided to change the order due to their overall harmonic progression; the 1899 song is in G-sharp minor, and the 1896 song begins in C-sharp minor and progresses to G-sharp minor, so the 1899 song going first allows the set to feel like a complete harmonic circle rather than just a simple line. The poet lived during the Renaissance, so the text is written in an old dialect of French no longer used by Ravel’s time, but this performance reflects how it would be pronounced nowadays (which is how Ravel would have pronounced it).
A Closer Listen
I. D’Anne qui me jecta de la neige
The song opens with wide octaves and fifths in the piano, setting the scene of the gentle snowy landscape. The narrator reflects on how Anne threw snow at them, but it awakened a fire within them. Partway through the song, Ravel gives an unconventional instruction; for the piano to play mezzo-piano and the singer to sing at only pianissimo. It is common in art song for the singer to be at a louder dynamic than the piano, or for the voice and piano to be equal, but not at all common for the piano to be the louder one. The text reveals the reason for this; the narrator is keeping their feelings about Anne a secret, wanting to simply hide it away in the snow.
II. D’Anne jouant de l’espinette
This song is an unusual interplay between the singer and pianist, where the pianist is actually playing the role of Anne. The narrator talks about how enthralling she is when she plays, and Ravel confirms it is indeed the pianist through the extended flashy piano solos he gives at the beginning and ending of the song, and how even when the singer does participate the voice is almost accompanying the piano rather than the other way around.
Manteau de fleurs
About the Work
In 1900, Ravel was expelled a second time from the Conservatoire for not winning any prizes for composition. He continued to audit Fauré’s classes until 1903, before abandoning the Conservatoire and launching into a full-time compositional career. He wrote Manteau de fleurs that same year, as well the much more popular orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade. While Shéhérazade is considered by many to be a masterpiece for its orchestral colors and text painting, Manteau de fleurs is perhaps less so. It is a musical beauty, but textually it is frilly and rather meaningless.
A Closer Listen
The song uses a similar texture to Chanson du rouet, with a constant tremolo in the right hand for the first section. While in the earlier song it represents the spinning wheel, in Manteau de fleurs the motivation is unclear for the running notes. Every new section of the song shows a new tempo as well as a new texture for the piano, rising and falling in beautiful fashion, but with no apparent relationship to the text. In the second to last section of the song, what appears to be Ravel’s true motivation in writing the song is revealed; he uses the exact melody for the singer and piano as he does in Shéhérazade’s “Asie.” Thinking of Manteau de fleurs as a trial run for a larger orchestral cycle pulls the whole song together; the not-so-important text, since the true practice is writing the music, the piano tremolos (much more common texturally in strings), and the gorgeous sweeping melodies.
Noël des jouets
About the Work
This is Ravel’s first and only song where he wrote the text himself. Noël des jouets translates loosely to “The Toys’ Christmas.” Ravel’s father was an engineer, and passed on to his son a fascination with mechanical toys, so it is not difficult to imagine this Christmas scene being Ravel’s childhood or possibly even adulthood. The song is dedicated to Madame Jean Cruppi, a writer and activist who studied piano with Fauré in her youth, and as an adult encouraged Ravel greatly in his early work. Later on, he would also dedicate his opera, L’heure espangole, to her, and the fugue from piano suite Le tombeau de Couperin to her son who died in service of World War I.
A Closer Listen
From the first notes of the piano and the breathless pianissimo of the voice, it is easy to feel the Christmas magic in the air. Each section of the music references something new in the text. At the beginning, we hear the rabbits’ drumming staccatos, then the gentle slurs for the Virgin Mary. After this we get a dark, yet playful tone shift as we acknowledge the dog, blithely named Beelzebub, wanting to eat the sugar-Jesus in his cradle. The middle section shifts to a beautifully slow polyrhythmic melody for the angels, and finally transitions to the joyful “Noël” shout at the end.
5 Mélodies populaires grecques
About the Work
In 1904, musicologist Pierre Aubry was preparing to give a lecture about Greek folksong. Somewhat last-minute, he decided it would add to his lecture to have an actual performance of some Greek songs. He asked Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, Greek-French musician and former classmate of Ravel, for advice on which songs would be most appropriate. Calvocoressi found five songs, and singer Louise Thomasset agreed to perform them on short notice, but refused to sing a cappella. As folk songs, there were no existing accompaniments for the songs, so Aubry asked Ravel to urgently write accompaniments, which he did in just 36 hours.
Calvocoressi was impressed both with Ravel’s quick writing and the quality of his accompaniments, and in 1906 asked Ravel to do three more for a demonstration of popular Greek music at École des Hautes Études-Sociales at the School of Art in Paris. These three, along with just two of the original five, were performed at the demonstration as what is now the 5 Mélodies populaires grecques by singer Marguerite Babaïan. The original three that didn’t make the cut were discarded by Ravel as being too brief to be worthwhile. The new collection of five was then published just a few weeks later, with Calvocoressi’s French translation. These songs were the first of Ravel’s to be accepted by prestigious publisher Durand, who was then Ravel’s publisher for the remainder of his life.
A Closer Listen
I. Chanson de la mariée
This song, in the Phrygian mode, is accompanied by constant repeating triplets and alternating octaves, demonstrating the excitement of the narrator in rousing their fiancée, with occasional accents to keep the rhythm clear. Halfway through, the harmonies in the piano get richer as the narrator presents the ribbon for tying up their fiancée’s hair, and everything slows for the ending describing the union of their families.
II. Là-bas, vers l’église
A slower tune, also in the Phrygian mode, with gentle rolled chords in the piano. The first half describes the church, and the second half adds low bass as the narrator reflects on the dead souls reunited in the graveyard.
III. Quel galant m’est comparable
This song is the simplest in the cycle, beginning with a single chord on the piano, before the singer performs the first verse a cappella (ironically, this was one of the original five songs performed with Thomasset, who didn’t want to perform a cappella!). There is a short piano interlude between verses, then the second verse is sparsely accompanied by first just single notes then simple rolled chords, and ending with the same interlude from halfway through.
IV. Chanson des cueilleuses de lentisques
The other song from the original 1904 set, and also the longest song in the cycle. Similarly to Quel galant, this song is a departure from Ravel’s usual style of thick chords and involved piano, with just a bare minimum accompaniment to put all the focus on the singer’s beautifully ornamented melody. The first verse is simple open-fifth chords in the piano, and the second the same chords but broken into triplets. Then the singer gets an a cappella phrase, before both come together for just a bit of harmonic variance before the song ends.
V. Tout gai!
The shortest song in the cycle, and also the most difficult for the pianist. The singer has a relatively simple melody narrating the excitement of the party, while the piano has intense alternating hand patterns, adding to the general upbeat mood of the song.
Les grand vents venus d’outremer
About the Work
A few months after the semi-disastrous premiere of Histoires naturelles, Ravel decided to make another bold move and write Les grand vents venus d’outremer. Where Renard’s Histoires was considered too simple to be set as art song, Régnier’s poetry was considered by some, including Debussy, to be too complex for music. Ravel had no qualms about matching Régnier’s complexity, making Les grand vents his most musically complicated song.
A Closer Listen
The song opens with a sweeping chord progression switching quickly from a triplet to a duplet pattern, first in a low octave, then a higher one, imitating the treacherous wind that the singer is about to describe. The music slows as the singer likens the wind to bitter strangers, and a new tempo is set for the second section, trying to encapsulate the solemn mood. The tempo picks up again when describing them slamming into things, reaching the high point of the song. The piano slowly drops off again to set up the singer performing the final phrase quasi a cappella, before the piano gives an unsteady outtro.
Histoires naturelles
About the Work
Histoires naturelles is one of Ravel’s most controversial compositions. It was first premiered in 1907 by mezzo-soprano Jane Bathori and Ravel himself at the piano. The main topic of controversy is the issue of the French mute “e,” also known as the schwa. While almost always silent in everyday French conversation, it is customary in formal singing or poetry recitation for the schwas to be pronounced as their own syllable.
Histoires naturelles, despite being musically complex, uses informal text with a relatively trivial vocabulary, so Ravel ignored all the regular schwa customs of French singing. In the score, he instructs the singer to voice (or not voice!) the schwas in three different ways. The first way is the most accepted, but appears least often, which is to follow the rule and treat the schwa as its own syllable on a separate note. The second way is called apocopation, where the schwa is made silent by writing it on the same note as another syllable. This appears commonly in this score, hence the controversy. The final way appears somewhat commonly in the score, though provides a conundrum for the performers. At times, there are two distinct notes written on the same pitch for the schwa and the syllable before it, but they are connected by a curved line that can be seen as either a slur or a tie. Ravel gives no instructions of how to interpret this marking, but context clues and historical evidence tell us it is to be interpreted as a slur; the first note of the slur receives more emphasis and the second much less. As such, the schwa is still pronounced, but it is an afterthought, similar to the effect of someone speaking French slowly but informally.
Predictably, audiences were outraged by the inconsistency of schwa interpretation. Debussy claimed Ravel was a “trickster” with this work. Bathori said by the fourth song in the cycle she expected the audience to throw their footstools at her. The famous critic Lalo compared Ravel to composer Chabrier, who also wrote a cycle about animals, saying “Chabrier treats his songs gaily and as a joke, Ravel treats his as a sermon on the Peacock and the Guinea-fowl.” Even Fauré, usually publicly supportive of Ravel, expressed disapproval with the work (though Fauré’s reaction may have been more due to the fact that half the audience left during intermission after hearing Ravel’s work, and Fauré himself had works premiering in the second half!).
A Closer Listen
I. Le Paon
The song opens with dotted rhythms, imitating the strut of the peacock on the way to his wedding. The music alternates between piano and mezzo-forte phrases for the singer, shifting between the matter-of-fact narrator and the engaged storyteller. In the most extreme example of this change, the singer twice exuberantly imitates the cry of the peacock – “Léon! Léon!” – before immediately reporting, “that’s how he calls his fiancée.”
II. Le Grillon
The song mostly maintains a simple musical texture of running sixteenth notes in the piano, with occasional pianistic flourishes imitating the rustling leaves and blades of grass. The cricket switches between quickly attending to his tasks in a panic and simply resting, which happens with complete pauses in the music while we wait for the cricket to decide to move again. The ending shifts suddenly to a more lyrical mood describing the countryside after the cricket sinks deep into the earth.
III. Le Cygne
This song has a clear ABA/coda structure. The A section is a beautiful flowing sound as the swan glides along the water plunging his beak into the cloud reflections on the surface, then the B section is a slightly slower chromatic unsteadiness as the water calms and the cloud reflection slowly reforms. The return of the A section is the swan gliding again as the narrator wonders if the swan might die before ever getting to feel what it would be like to actually eat a cloud. The ending breaks out of the silly stupor, as the narrator realizes that the swan was not really chasing clouds, just fish underneath the surface, and would certainly not be dying anytime soon!
IV. Le Martin-Pêcheur
This is the slowest song in the cycle, and also uniquely describing the experience of the narrator, rather than only the animal in question. We hear long stretches of silence representing the waiting one experiences while fishing, we hear the music accelerate as the narrator realizes the large bird is right in front of them, then quickly taper down as they calm themselves to not scare the bird away, and finally the calm wonder as the kingfisher flies off to perch somewhere else.
V. La Pintade
The song begins suddenly, with a loud grace note pattern in the right hand imitating the pervasive cry of the guinea-fowl. These grace notes persist in some form through most of the song, showing the range of cries through the range of bizarre actions it undertakes. The song is punctuated by technical challenges for both musicians, including patter and difficult melodic leaps for the singer, and glissando and quick repeated notes for the pianist. Partway through, we get a respite from the fast and furious music while the guinea-fowl goes out to the countryside and everyone can relax. Of course, it’s not gone long, and the most difficult repeated note section for the piano signifies its return.
Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera
About the Work
In 1895, when Ravel was between his periods at the Conservatoire, Ravel wrote a short piece for piano duo called Habanera. In 1897, he would write a companion piece for it, Entre cloches, to make it a short piano duo set called Sites auriculaires, and in 1907, he would repurpose Habanera into a movement of his famous orchestral suite, Rapsodie espagnole. Before completing orchestration of Rapsodie espangole, he decided to take the inspiration of the Habanera style and write a new one, Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera. Later, he would arrange the work for cello and piano, which opened the door for other musicians to arrange it for their own instruments. Nowadays, the work exists in over 25 different instrument configurations (and those are just the ones that are published!).
A Closer Listen
The definition of a vocalise is a vocal passage consisting of a melody without words, so there is no text for this work. The singer performs the entire piece on an open vowel sound, giving full attention to the shape of the vocal line and technical flourishes one would expect in an étude. The piano provides the habanera, a steady dotted rhythm followed by two eighth notes, occasionally overlaid with a triplet whether in the piano, the voice, or both.
Sur l’herbe
About the Work
This song is the second of Verlaine’s poems Ravel set to music, the first being Un grand sommeil noir. Sur l’herbe is in a completely different style; while Un grand sommeil noir was dark and simple, Sur l’herbe is fragmented, drunken pieces of a conversation, with a hyphen in the poem every time a different person speaks. He also includes quite a few instances of apocopation and schwa-slurring similar to Histoires naturelles, to bolster the informality of the song.
A Closer Listen
The song begins with a piano introduction immediately conveying the feeling of just how drunk everyone in this scene is. The wavering sixteenth notes give the feeling of being unsteady on one’s feet, and the sudden accents the sense of barely saving oneself from falling over. For exactly one line, the very first vocal phrase, we get almost normal music, as the singer gives the only narrative line in the entire song; “L’abbé divague.” After this, the remainder of the song changes musically with every new phrase, resulting in a hilarious farce that barely holds itself together.
Chants populaires
About the Work
The success of the 5 Mélodies populaires grecques as accompanied folksongs encouraged Ravel to enter a competition sponsored by the Maison du Lied of Moscow for the harmonization of folksongs of various countries. In 1909, he wrote seven accompaniments to popular tunes the Maison provided of France, Italy, Spain, Scotland, Flanders, Russia, and the Hebrews.
The competition took place in 1910, and four songs won prizes; the Spanish, French, Italian, and Hebrew. Ravel took these four and published them as Chants populaires. The Scottish song, Chanson écossaise, was discovered in manuscript form after his death, while the remaining two songs were presumably destroyed by Ravel. Chanson écossaise was published separately, though traditionally performed with the rest of the Chants populaires set. All of the songs have a French translation provided by the Maison du Lied for the composers to understand what they were writing, in addition to transliterations of the songs’ original languages.
A Closer Listen
Chanson espangole
Despite being titled “Spanish Song,” this song is more specifically in the Galician language, which stems from an area in northwestern Spain and has similarities with Portuguese. The song has a low vocal range and pretty steady, if ornamented, melody, but also has a fast-paced low range piano part that frequently emphasizes weaker beats to keep rhythmic novelty.
Chanson française
Like Chanson espangole, this “French Song” is not in French, but rather in the Limousin dialect of Occitan. It is spoken in a few areas in southwestern France, but nowadays, due to the French single language policy, it is dying out. The song in every other way is the opposite of Chanson espangole, it has a clearly soprano range for the voice, much of the song is written in double treble clef for the piano, and excluding the grace notes in the final cadence, the shortest rhythmic value for the piano is a quarter note, compared to Chanson espangole’s triplet 16th note, giving a much more relaxed mood to the song.
Chanson italienne
This song is in an older Roman dialect of Italian. The shortest song of the set, Ravel allows the singer to sing in full Italian-style passion with a fairly unassuming piano accompaniment, mostly block chords and grace notes, with the exception of one 32nd note flourish before the final phrase.
Chanson hébraïque
This song is the longest and most linguistically complex of the set, with a combination of Yiddish, Aramaic, and Hebrew. The transliteration provided by the Maison du Lied is based on German pronunciation conventions, since much of the song is in Yiddish, which is closely related to German. In addition, the Hebrew transliteration is based on the pronunciation specific to Eastern Europe, mostly spoken only by Ultra-Orthodox Jews today. The song is musically simple, the verses a father questioning his son on principles from the Talmud to a relatively active piano accompaniment, and his son responding in turn recitative-style over simple long chords in the piano. The father speaks his questions in Yiddish, and the son responds in Hebrew and Aramaic when quoting the Talmud.
Chanson écossaise
This song is in the Scots language, which has strong similarities to English. Scots is sometimes regarded as simply the Scottish dialect of English due to its commonalities and the colonization efforts of England, but it is also accepted as its own language, given that it has its own dialects. The text for this song is written by the poet Robert Burns. The song has a long piano introduction, playing first a simple theme with grace notes and easy harmonies, then a “Ravel” version of the theme with more 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths. This version does not stick around, gradually transitioning back to the original version, which accompanies the singer for the remainder of the song.
Tripatos
About the Work
In 1909, Marguerite Babïan, the singer who performed the updated 5 Mélodies populaires grecques, asked Ravel for a sixth Greek folksong to add to the cycle when she performed it. His response was Tripatos, a danse chantée with just a few lines of text and a lot of tra-li-la. Though Babaian began performing it alongside the 5 Mélodies, it was not published until after Ravel’s death, as he never sent it to Durand for publication. Unlike the 5 Mélodies, this score still contains the original Greek, of unknown poetic origin.
A Closer Listen
Danse chantée translates most accurately to “vocal dance,” a similar style to an étude. The song opens with a low chord in the piano as the singer begins a slow introduction. As the introduction progresses, the music crescendos and the range of the piano increases, before cutting off abruptly. The final line of text is sung at the faster tempo, before switching fully to the danse chantée part of the song, where all remaining notes are sung on tra-li-la.
2 Mélodies hébraïques
About the Work
In 1914, Russian soprano Alvina Alvi, commissioned Ravel to harmonize two more Hebrew melodies in addition to the one he had published in the Chants populaires. The first is the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, and the second translates to “The Eternal Question,” based on a Yiddish verse. There is no definitive record of who provided Ravel the transliterations published in the score, though it is suspected to be Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, who provided the translations for the 5 Mélodies populaires grecques. The transliteration for Kaddisch, in Aramaic and Hebrew, is considered odd by experts, appearing to be a hybrid of German and French phonology, and the transliteration of L’énigme éternelle appears to be from a different source entirely; as an example, using “V” for the “v” sound in “velt” when normally in a German-based transliteration a “W” would be used to make a “v” sound. The Hebrew songs gained immense popularity after publication and are frequently performed in a set together with the Chanson hébraïque.
A Closer Listen
I. “Kaddisch”
This has one of the simplest piano accompaniments of all of Ravel’s songs. The first half of the song is completely focused on the voice and all its ornamentation, with high chords in the piano only every several beats. The second half involves the piano slightly more, allowing some flourishes on the downbeats as the singer transitions to a slower, less ornamented melody, before a slow, chordal build to the final climax.
II. “L’énigme éternelle”
The music is just as circular and repetitive as the text, asking a musical question to which there is no answer. The song begins harmonically confused, with a repeating two-chord progression that does not resolve. In the middle section, where the text changes, the music changes slightly as well, to a brighter, more tonal area, but it ends the same way it starts, with an unsatisfying fade into nothing.
Ronsard a son âme
About the Work
At the end of 1923, the Revue musicale, a music publishing magazine, reached out to Ravel and several other composers to invite them to set poetry by Pierre de Ronsard in celebration of the upcoming 400th anniversary of his birth. Ravel and seven other composers accepted, though Ravel was deeply depressed at the time due to the deaths of his parents and friends in the war over the past decade. He chose this text, “Ronsard to his soul,” intending to “put to music an epitaph for Ronsard.” The song was written in less than a month and published in a special issue of Revue Musicale titled Ronsard et la musique in January 1924. This issue aimed to highlight Ronsard’s belief in the strong connection between poetry and music. The song was dedicated to Marcelle Gerar, who premiered the work with Ravel on piano. Ravel once joked that this was “the best song [he’d] ever written,” as he could “play the piano with just one hand and hold a cigarette in the other.”
A Closer Listen
While Ravel may have been joking about this song being the best due to being able to smoke and play simultaneously, he was not joking about being able to play with one hand for the majority of the time. The entire piano accompaniment is written as just open fifths, with only the last stanza adding a simple lower-countermelody for the left hand. Many pianists still choose to play the fifths with two hands, however, as it allows more control over the legato.
Rêves
About the Work
In January 1927, Ravel received a commission to write Rêves. Marcel Raval, director of Les Feuilles libres, was doing a special issue on Léon-Paul Fargue, the author of the text. Ravel completed the work in February, and the song was published and performed by Ravel and Jane Bathori in March. This is one of Ravel’s least-known works; despite being his last song for piano and voice, it is beautiful, but its brevity often causes it to be forgotten.
A Closer Listen
It is clear that Ravel’s composing for art song became simpler as he aged, preferring to put more of his energy into his ballets and other orchestral works. It wouldn’t be Ravel, however, if he didn’t use at least a little bit of text painting; in the middle section we hear the piano imitate the train whistle. The song otherwise is almost easy, showcasing the simplicity and lack of meaning our dreams sometimes have.
Shéhérazade
About the Work
In the early 1900s, Ravel became acquainted with poet Tristan Klingsor in their mutual group, “Les Apaches.” At one meeting, the poet read some of his newly written verses to the group under the title Shéhérazade, inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov’s composition of the same name. Ravel was enamored with them, and immediately decided to set three of the verses to music. Although the work was always conceptualized as an orchestral song cycle, Ravel also wrote a piano-vocal score, as is common for orchestral pieces to make it easier for the singer to read. Shéhérazade is one of Ravel’s most popular works today.
A Closer Listen
I. Asie
The longest song of the cycle, typically around 10 minutes long on its own. Ravel employs all orchestral colors available to him as the narrator imagines what it would be like to visit various places in Asia, with key and mood changing to match every new scenario.
II. La flûte enchantée
The simplest song in terms of orchestration and accompaniment, mostly soft tremolo underneath solo flute, which the narrator imagines is being played by her lover.
III. L’indifferent
One of Ravel’s most harmonically rich compositions, L’indifferent is the simple story of a narrator who is enthralled by the charms of a young person, but fails to persuade them to enter the narrator’s home