Maurice Ravel
1875-1937
The distinctive style of Ravel’s
work has granted him a lasting popularity. His innovative piano style,
orchestral genius and sophisticated harmonies also made him one of the most
eminent composers of his own time. This scrupulous craftsman was a talented
decorative artist, as well as a conductor, pianist, and teacher of a select few
pupils.
Joseph Maurice Ravel was born in
Ciboure, near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, in the Basque region of France. His mother was
Basque and his father, an engineer, was of Swiss decent. The family moved to
Paris in June 1875, soon after Maurice’s birth, and it was here that he spent
most of his childhood. His family encouraged his musical talents and sent him
to study in the preparatory piano class at the Paris Conservatoire in 1889.
That year, when Ravel was 14
years old, Paris hosted the World Exhibition. He was a constant visitor to the
performances of oriental and exotic music on the Champ de Mars. Javanese
gamelan and Annamite dancers had never been seen in Europe. Most of all, the
Tour Eiffel was a striking symbol of France’s renaissance, permanently changing
the face of Paris. The world now looked to Paris for the arts and innovation.
The Impressionists, Symbolists and Neo-Realists were exhibiting in the Salon
des Indépendants. Theatres were producing plays by Poe and Zola. The poet
Mallarmé held weekly meetings at his house in the Rue de Rome, attended by
painters and musicians and famous men of letters. Marcel Proust and Anatole
France were rising stars in literature, Massenet at the Opera, Toulouse-Lautrec
and Satie at Cabaret. All of them were influenced by this major event in Paris,
as C19th barriers were challenged and broken down by the avant-garde.
Ravel admired independent
pioneers like Debussy, Chabrier and particularly Satie, whom he met in a
Montmartre café, ‘La Nouvelle Athènes’ in 1891. He was also influenced by
Russian music, conducted by Rimski-Korsakov at many concerts in Paris. However,
his own creativity was very individual from the outset and oriental rhythms,
scales and decorative art remained a lifelong passion.
At the Conservatoire he
befriended the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, who would become one of the
greatest performers of his music. In class, things were not going so well; his
tutor Bériot, called him “a criminal; instead of being at the top of his class,
he was at the bottom”. His mother even tried to bribe him to practice more but
Ravel was too easily distracted by anything that seemed more interesting.
He
was never comfortable with authority and the Conservatoire tutors despaired of
trying to control his impertinence. He absorbed techniques of composition,
harmony, counterpoint and analysed classical scores to learn his craft. The
conventions and rules of academic instruction, he viewed as a necessary evil
and he consciously strove to maintain his complete independence, although he
was considered aloof, sarcastic and argumentative.
The sensuous and dreamy Symbolist poems of Mallarmé, Poe
and Baudelaire inspired him and hearing Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un
faune” transported Ravel to new worlds. He made frequent visits to see
Debussy’s Pelléas at Opéra-Comique, but his subsequent friendship with Debussy
was soured when Ravel sided with Madame Debussy during the acrimonious divorce.
Debussy’s affair with Emma Bardac deeply offended his strong sense of personal
principals and he sent Debussy’s ex-wife a small allowance following her
attempted suicide in 1904.
By 1898 Ravel had works
published, which were technically mature and highly evolved, yet academically
he was unsuccessful. In 1901 his ‘Jeux d’Eau’ was an amazing virtuoso piano
piece, which historically inaugurated new technical resources for the piano as
an instrument. That year he also entered the prestigious “Prix de Rome”. The
winner would be sent to the Villa Medici in Rome to study with a scholarship
from the French Institute for three years. This was a cultural centre and
hothouse for prize-winning sculptors, painter and musicians. Ravel came second
and in 1902 he tried again. Again he was unsuccessful but his String Quartet in
F made him famous. In 1903, he entered the competition again but this time he
failed to be placed and, because he had not won a prize, he had to leave
Fauré’s composition class.
The following year he dedicated to composing his
song cycle ‘Shéhérazade’ and by 1905 he was a fully-fledged composer and author
of two masterpieces. He decided to try for the “Prix de Rome” once more but was
not even admitted as a candidate. There were furious protests in the National
press and “L’Affaire Ravel” became a sensational scandal.
The Conservatoire’s refusal to
admit to the “Prix de Rome” a composer adequately established in the ‘outside’
world was considered to be a grotesque error. The ensuing controversy was only
resolved after Dubois resigned the directorship of the Conservatoire and was
replaced by Fauré and a more open-minded administration. This scandal made
Ravel a celebrity and the next ten years were the most productive of his life.
Many of his best works were composed during this period including ‘Miroirs’,
‘Histoires Naturelles’, ‘Rapsodie Espagnole’ and ’L’Heure Espagnole.’
Ravel was always aloof, impeccably dressed and feigned a
lifestyle of dandyism. He led a bohemian existence but not the sordid kind. He
was sophisticated, moving in select circles of the most distinguished artists,
writers and musicians. He was a member of ‘Les Apaches’ an exclusive society of
artists, who met at the studio of the painter Paul Sordes. This included Viñes,
Falla, Fargue, Inghelbrecht, Delage and Klingsor, the poets of Shéhérazade.
They adored the brilliant yet often brutal music of the Russian ‘Five’ and
played music all night. Eventually the neighbours complained and so Delage
rented detached cottage at Auteuil. Here Ravel listened motionless to poetry
reading, playing when and what he wanted, because he felt unable to do justice
to music he didn’t like.
He was a great friend of the Godebskas, a Polish family of
great culture and refinement, and although not very wealthy, their flat in the
Rue d’Athènes was the rendezvous for the elite of Parisian culture. Misia’s
husband Alfred Edwards, was the millionaire proprietor of the Parisian daily
“Le Matin” at time of the Ravel Affaire and had given vigorous support to the
cause. His wife was a great patron of the arts and a leader in fashion. Her
salon was one of the most brilliant in Paris. To escape Paris for a while they
invited him to join them on their yachting cruise via the waterways of France,
Holland and Germany to Ostend then by sea to Le Havre. This pleasure trip
inspired most of the composition of his ‘Histoires Naturelles’.
Ravel was as impressed by exhibitions of Hals, Rembrandt
and Velasquez, as he was by the brightly coloured houses of Amsterdam, lakes
surrounded by windmills and factories. These “strange, magnificent
factories…like a sort of Romanesque cathedral of cast iron, emitting a reddish
smoke and slender flames,” particularly fascinated him. “Castles of iron, these
incandescent cathedrals, the marvellous symphony of conveyor belts, whistles
and mighty hammer-blows.” The mechanical
sounds he heard and the experience of gliding along canals on the white boat
would deeply influence his next composition.
The autumn of 1906 he spent writing the song cycle for
voice and piano. It was an important step in his evolution, pushing to extreme
his concern with spoken language and openly questioning the barrier between
popular and serious music. First composer to attempt this was Chabrier in his
‘10 Pièces Pittoresques’, which Ravel admired. With his ‘Histoires Naturelles’,
Ravel created yet another great scandal among audiences who were accustomed to
chansons with melodic lines and accompaniments.
The critics in general took Ravel seriously but didn’t
understand what he was trying to do. Jules Renard, a master of irony and acute
observation, whose poems Ravel had set, was completely baffled by the songs.
Ravel said, “For a long time I had been attracted by the clear, direct language
and deep hidden poetry of these sketches by Jules Renard. The text itself
demanded a particular kind of declamation, closely bound to the inflexions of
the French language.”
However the audience was deeply shocked that a serious
composer would set such trivialities to music and called the music an outrage.
Debussy was shocked by what he deemed
“an abrogation of artistic responsibility” and referred to Ravel’s
writing as “factitious Americanism”. However the ground breaking vocal style of
‘Histoires Naturelles’ was unique to Ravel and the furore made him more
determined to follow his own musical ideas.
The songs were first performed in 1907, by the singer Jane
Bathori, at a concert of the Société Nationale. Bathori was a champion of new
music in France and a great interpreter of avant-garde songs. She was greatly
admired and was a faithful interpreter of Satie and ‘Les Six’. Ravel
accompanied her at the piano. She was deeply offended, but unshakeable, when
some of the songs were subjected to whistles and jeers from the audience,
particularly the silent bars of ‘Le Grillon’ and during “Ça n’a pas mordu ce soir” in ‘Le
Martin-Pêcheur’. The critic Pierre Lalo persistently found “the unmistakable
echo of Debussy’s music” in the ‘Histoires Naturelles’, which is a most odd
opinion, given the vehemence of the audience’s disapproval, and thus provoked
yet another violent controversy in the Paris press.
It appeared to the music critics and to the public that
Ravel had overthrown melody and left hardly more than spoken declamation,
ignoring all the accepted conventions of song setting by eliding the mute final
“e”. This particularly shocked the
purists and even today is disconcerting to our ears. Ravel believed “the French
language…has its own accents and musical inflexions.”
World War One was a deeply shattering experience for
Ravel. He felt as if the world and his friends had changed and he became
obsessed by thoughts of the horrors the war would bring to those around him. He
was disqualified from military and so he volunteered as a driver with the motor
transport corps, to remain inactive when all his friends had joined regiments
was intolerable to him and by 1916 he was at the front near Verdun. He
developed insomnia in despair at losing his friends and he was preoccupied with
his mother’s poor health, trying always to hide reality of war from her.
In September 1916 he got dysentery and was sent to
hospital at Châlons-sur-Marne. He returned to Paris to recuperate, and found
his mother seriously ill. He was overwhelmed with grief and despair when she
died in January 1917. The Army discharged him so he spent the summer of 1917 at
Lyons-la-Forêt to try to recover. Later he went to St Cloud, to stay with his
brother but his insomnia and depression worsened. Holiday trips to the
mountains intensified his sense of solitude and he was haunted by memories of his
mother. He felt abandoned and desolate.
After the war, Ravel composed many works, which were to
bring him international acclaim. He created yet another sensation in 1920, by
refusing to accept the decoration of the Legion of Honour. In May 1921 he moved
to the ancient village of Montfort l’Amaury, in the forest of Rambouillet. This
tranquil manorial village with its C15th ruins and historic church with rare
and beautiful Renaissance stained-glass windows, had always attracted the
artistic, literary and musical elite of Paris. The half-timbered coaching inns
still offer comfortable accommodation at modest prices, and the patrons are a
great source of local history.
Ravel moved into ‘Le Belvédère’, finding here the calm he
needed to compose his ‘Boléro’ and other well-loved pieces. In this little
pavilion, which his friends described it as a badly cut piece of Camembert, he
would look out from his balcony at the village and the beautiful landscape of
the Ile-de-France. He had all the modern amenities installed: central heating,
a telephone and a hot water shower, which amazed the people of the village, who
still collected their water daily from the fountain. He decorated the little
house with exquisite taste. His touch is everywhere from hand-painted chairs
and stencilling, which he did himself, to his carefully placed collection of
ornaments, musical boxes, chinoiserie and mechanical toys. The rooms are
exactly proportioned to the requirements of this fastidious individual; he took
time and effort to get things right, which is reflected in all his music.
“In my own composition I judge a long period of gestation
necessary…Thus, I can be occupied for several years without writing a single
note of the work, after which the composition goes relatively quickly. But one
must spend time in eliminating all that could be regarded as superfluous in
order to realise… the definitive clarity so much desired”.
His music room is dominated by portraits of his family
painted by his uncle and little ornaments including a mechanical nightingale, a
gift from Germaine Tailleferre, one of ’Les Six’. The garden was designed in a
Japanese style with bonsai and a system of little rills. He also had a small
vegetable plot across a path at the side of his house and loved to offer fruit
and vegetables to his guests, but he discouraged long visits by his friends. He
had a small but devoted number of students. His housekeeper had her own rooms
at the back of the house.
He was happy to go shopping in the village, take an
aperitif at the café and chat with the local people, but the church bells would
annoy him intensely as they chime every quarter hour. The village is
justifiably proud of its Ravel Museum at his house and for the last five years
they have organised a two-week festival of his music and inspirations: ‘Les Journées Ravel à Montfort l’Amaury’.
He conducted many of his works during exhausting tours of
the USA, England, Vienna, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Scandinavia and
Belgium. Oxford University conferred upon him the degree of D.Mus. hon. causa,. He disliked public
appearances but the USA gave him new inspirations. From 1932 he worked on
commissions including ‘Boléro’ for a Spanish-style ballet and songs for a
Chaliapin film based on Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’ called ’Don Quichotte à
Dulcinée’. He had a particular fascination with exotic and antique life.
A road accident in 1932 is believed to have caused
injuries to his brain, which developed into Pick’s Disease. He became unable to
move or speak, yet his mind was fully functioning. He decided to travel through
Spain and North Africa, to experience the exotic places he had imagined in his
work. On his return to ‘Le Belvédère’ he
was cared for his housekeeper and visited by neighbours, but in his lucid mind
saw his own decline daily. His friends took him to a concert of his music and
his eyes filled with tears. His mind was still full of music. He died in
December 1937 after unsuccessful brain operation.
Ravel’s genius had extended the tonality and enriched the
harmonic language, which is now accepted and incorporated into C20th music.
Although Debussy’s ‘Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune’ opened his ears to
musical possibilities, it is difficult today to see how he could be accused of
imitating Debussy. His passion for the exotic world of fairy tales and
fantasies, sprites and the supernatural, birds and animals is reflected in the
majority of his work. He expected his interpreters to carry out his instructions
to the letter because, “my ambition is to say with notes what a poet says with
words; I think and feel in music…I am a Basque, and the Basques feel very
deeply but seldom show it, and then only to a very few.”
Ravel was touchingly childlike behind his cool exterior:
the charming foibles and penchants (amongst others for cats and cocktails), his
affinity for children, his fussiness as to dress, his love of parties ‘en plein
air’, of chinoiserie and of the ridiculous. He was glacially cool to pushy
admirers and inquisitive critics but to his friends, no trouble was too great,
no kindness too extravagant. “Le coeur ironique et tendre qui bat sous le gilet
de velours de Maurice Ravel.” Tristan Klingsor:
“the ironic and tender heart that beats under the velvet jacket of Maurice
Ravel.”
Histoires
Naturelles
Ravel was particularly attracted to Jules Renard’s ironic
miniature ‘Bestiare’ with its dry observations, which would not usually invite
musical treatment. Yet Ravel produced a masterpiece creating the perfect
atmosphere of each brief tale with accurate and minute detail. In no place does the
voice rely on the piano, yet the songs are amazing in their simplicity. The
music is a reflection of the sounds and the play of light, unreal in a natural
world. Impressionism in its purest form.
The peacock preens himself in preparation for his lavish
wedding and Ravel builds to a climax that suddenly disappears in a cloud of
dust. The disillusionment of the peacock is underlined by Ravel’s use of
colloquial French speech, surrounded by the revered style of a French overture.
The song was dedicated to its first interpreter Madame Jane Bathori.
The cricket is fussy and nervous in his obsessions. The
music adds to the words by varying the timing of the text and thus altering our
perception. The pauses that Ravel requires are unusually long, but allow the
listener to have time to identify with the activities and emotions of the
insect. The music in the final line emphasises a dramatic contrast between the
small insect and the huge landscape.
The Swan is dedicated to Misia Godebska and reflects
Ravel’s vacation with her and her family on their luxury yacht. The rippling
piano part contrasts the easy glide of the swan while underneath its legs are
paddling away to maintain his serene exterior. Finally the narrator laughs at
himself for romanticising the normal behaviour of the bird looking for food.
In the Kingfisher the harmony is technically very
sophisticated, preparing the listener for some profound lyrical statement, yet
the poem turns out to be slang: “not a bite this evening”. Ravel emphasizes the
breathlessness of the fisherman looking at the beautiful bird on the end of his
rod, and likewise makes us afraid of making a noise to disturb it.
The pianist’s greatest challenge comes in the last song,
the Guinea Fowl, with its gruppetti and shrill explosive acciaccaturas. The
hunchback lurches around the farmyard creating chaos and Ravel explores the
animal’s sound and disturbance in the difficult rhythms and awkward intervals.
The Musée Ravel at
Montfort l’Amaury is open by
appointment only. Everyone in the village will check if you have an
appointment! The curators are extremely well
informed about Ravel and his work. They love to play his piano and accompany
you if you take along your Ravel music. The Dreux train from Paris Montparnasse
will take you to Montfort-Méré station, but the village is four kilometres from
the village and you will need to call a taxi. They do not have
taxis or buses during the summer vacation.
The Ravel Festival takes place at the beginning of
October and information is available from the Tourist Office. The Manager is very friendly and really helpful, as was everyone
that we met in the village. There are lovely tea-rooms, excellent restaurants
and picturesque hotels among the half-timbered mansions and shops. Montfort
l’Amaury is definitely worth a visit on your next trip.
© H Kean
My Translations of Histoires Naturelles - I hope you will enjoy singing them as much as I did
1. Le Paon The Peacock
He will certainly
be married today.
It should have been yesterday.
In his gala attire he was ready.
He was only waiting for his
fiancee.
She has not come.
She cannot be long.
Magnificent,
He walks with the demeanour
Of an Indian prince
Bearing about him
The customary rich gifts.
Love enhances
The brilliance of his colours
And his crest trembles like a
lyre.
The fiancee does not come.
He climbs to the top of the roof
And looks towards the sun.
He utters his fiendish cry: Léon!
Léon!
It is thus that he calls his
fiancee.
He sees nothing coming
And no one replies.
The fowls who are used to him,
Do not even raise their heads at
all.
They are tired of admiring him.
He descends into the courtyard
again,
So sure of his beauty
That he is incapable of
resentment.
His marriage will take place
tomorrow.
And not knowing what to do
For the rest of the day,
He turns towards the flight of
steps.
He ascends as though
They were the steps of a temple,
With an official tread.
He spreads open his tail,
Heavy with all the eyes
That could not leave it.
Once more he repeats the
ceremony.
2. Le Grillon The Cricket
This is the hour
When tired of wandering,
The black insect returns from his
walk
And carefully tidies
The disorder of his home.
First he rakes his narrow sandy
paths.
He makes some sawdust
Which he spreads on the threshold
Of his retreat.
He files the roots of this tall
grass
Likely to annoy him.
He rests.
Then he rewinds his tiny watch.
Has he finished? Is it broken?
He rests again for a moment.
He goes inside and shuts the
door.
For a long time
He turns the key in the delicate
lock.
And he listens: not a sound
outside.
But he does not feel safe.
And as though by a little chain
With a creaking pulley,
He lets himself down
In to the depths of the earth.
Nothing more is heard.
In the silent countryside,
The poplars rise like fingers in
the air,
Pointing at the moon.
3. Le Cygne The Swan
He glides on the lakes
Like a white sleigh,
From one cloud to another.
For he is hungry only for the
fluffy clouds,
That he sees appearing, moving
And vanishing in the water.
It is one of these that he wants.
He takes aim with his beak,
And suddenly plunges his snowy
neck
Into the water.
Then, like a woman’s arm
Emerging from a sleeve,
He draws it back.
He has caught nothing.
He looks:
The startled clouds have
disappeared.
He is only disillusioned for a
moment,
For the clouds are not slow to
return,
And yonder,
Where the ripples of the water
die away,
There is one reforming.
Softly, on a light cushion of
feathers,
The swan paddles and draws near.
He is exhausted
By fishing for unreal
reflections,
And perhaps he will die
A victim of this illusion,
Before catching a single piece of
cloud.
But what am I saying?
Each time he plunges in,
He burrows in the nourishing mud
And brings out a worm.
He grows as fat as a goose.
4. Le Martin-Pêcheur The Kingfisher
Not a bite this evening,
But I had a thrilling experience.
As I held out my fishing rod
A kingfisher came and perched on
it.
We do not have a bird more
dazzling.
He looked like a big blue flower
On the end of a long stalk.
The rod bent under the weight.
I held my breath,
So proud to be mistaken for a
tree
By a kingfisher.
And I am sure
That he did not fly away out of
fear,
But that he believed he was only
passing
From one branch to another.
5. La Pintade The Guinea Fowl
She is the hunchback of my
courtyard.
She thinks of nothing but
fighting
Because of her hump.
The hens say nothing to her:
Suddenly she dashes across
And harasses them.
Then she lowers her head, leans
forward,
And with all the speed of her
skinny feet,
She runs and smites with her hard
beak,
Right in the middle of the
turkey’s tail.
This poser annoys her.
Thus, with her head turned blue
And her wattles lively,
Belligerent, she rages from dawn
to dusk.
She fights for no reason,
Perhaps because she is always
imagining
That they are laughing at her figure,
At her bald head, and her low
tail.
And she incessantly utters
Her discordant cry
Which pierces the air like a
needle point.
Sometimes she leaves the
courtyard
And disappears.
She gives the peaceable fowls
A moment’s respite.
But she returns
More turbulent and more peevish.
And in a frenzy,
She sprawls on the ground.
What’s the matter with her then?
The sneaky creature is playing a
trick.
She went to lay her egg
In the open country.
I could look for it if I like.
And she rolls in the dust
Like a hunchback.
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