FRENCH DANDY?

“I have written but one masterpiece: the Bolero. Unfortunately, it does not contain any music.”

As is the fate of a number of composers, Maurice Ravel owes his fame to precisely those works, which he himself did not consider to be the most important. The reception given to Ravel by the German-speaking nations confirms the above-mentioned statement. Without his Bolero, Ravel would just have been considered one of many. Now, it so happens that the Germans traditionally give the French composers from around the turn of the century a hard time (although Ravel was, by birth, a Basque). In his youth especially, Ravel enjoyed presenting himself as a dandy, and in no time he came under fire from the German critics, who (then as now) made a sharp distinction between serious and light music: his indisputable instrumental virtuosity was considered superficial, his profound understanding of jazz, ballet and dance in general was quickly dismissed as “affected, amusing behaviour”, and likewise, his distinctive affinity with the children’s world of fairy-tales and animals was considered to be of little substance. Moreover, the critics made a major distinction between Ravel’s conscious employment of tonality as relating to the fundamental tone, and the “New Viennese School” of composers such as Schönberg, Berg and Webern: in their opinion, Ravel was no innovator. Is this criticism justified, or was it perhaps just a reaction to the major success Ravel was enjoying with his audiences? Clearly, there is no single definite or correct answer to this: however, a glance at the works themselves at least presents certain perspectives, which help an unbiased listener to make up his mind.
The Bolero, which was composed and first performed in Paris in 1928, was originally written as ballet music. The work was commissioned by Ida Rubenstein and owes its creation to the intricate maze of the copyright world: namely, Ravel was forced to discard the original plan, which was to score a number of pieces from Isaac Albéniz’ piano suite Iberia, and instead decided to “experiment” with a new idea. The work consists of a single, drawn-out crescendo. Two Bolero melodies are constantly repeated in different instrumental forms in a constant rhythm up to the penultimate bar, at which moment Ravel prepares his ingenious final coup: shortly before the end, he changes from the key of C major, which he had employed until then, to E major, and the work collapses completely upon itself – in the same way as does La valse. The orchestral machinery, previously set in motion and brought to a climax, is simply terminated. Simplicity and sophistication complement each other here in a synthesis, with an at times hypnotic effect.
Daphnis et Chloé was also a commissioned work, and likewise a ballet. Following the establishment of his “Ballet Russes”, Sergei Diaghilev – perhaps the first modern “cultural manager” – had taken the ballet scene by storm, not just in Paris or within France, but throughout the whole of Europe. It was only a matter of time until Diaghilev would also commission a composition from Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé, a novel by the late-classical author Longos, which took as its theme the abduction, liberation and homecoming of Chloé, as well as the reunion with her lover Daphnis. Between 1909 – 1912, Ravel composed his Symphonie choréographique, the orchestral sound of which ventured forth on entirely new ground. Although the work had been planned and written according to a “rigorous, tonal plan” as a “symphonic unity”, Ravel extracted two concert suites from this in 1911 and 1913, at the time consisting of three parts, which he adorned with a huge orchestra, which nevertheless was employed in an extremely elegant fashion, producing incredible tone-colours. The magical description of the sunrise in “Lever du jour” makes it one of Ravel’s most beautiful pieces. The euphoric ending (“Danse générale”) demonstrates that opulence and balance can very easily form two separate approaches to an intelligent scoring.
Ravel’s above-mentioned predilection for the worlds of childish themes and fairy-tales led among others to the composition of his cycle Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose), which he wrote between 1908-1910 as a five-part composition for piano duet. Unlike the highly complex and virtuoso Gaspard de la nuit, these pieces can also be played by piano students of an intermediate level. In 1911, Ravel orchestrated the work and also created a ballet version, by adding on two movements. “My intention of evoking the poetry of childhood in these pieces has led me to simplify my style and to make my writing more transparent,” thus wrote Ravel with reference to
Ma mère l’oye. In all the movements, magical situations are evoked by means of subtly devised simplicity. Thus, for instance, one hears in the “Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant” (Sleeping Beauty) the magic of the enchanted forest and castle. “Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête” tells of the meeting between the Beauty and the Beast, who turns into a prince. “Petit Poucet” (Tom Thumb) walks through the mysteriously whispering woods, full of twittering birds and roaring animals. Ravel portrays a fairy-like China in Laideronette, Impératrice des pagodes – exotic tone-colours created by using pentatonic scales, xylophone sounds and gentle melodies. Finally, the listener is abducted and taken to a fairy garden (“Le jardin féerique”) – which, rather than the evocation of a purely fairy-tale-like atmosphere, is more a “description of a psychological state of mind” (Schmalzriedt).

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