Sonata for Violin & Piano No.1, M.12

Ravel did not deem it necessary to include this first attempt at a sonata for piano and violin in the catalogue of his works. This single movement was completed in April 1897 and probably performed in the context of Gabriel Fauré’s composition classes at the Conservatory during the academic year 1897-1898 by violinist Georges Enesco, accompanied by Ravel himself on the piano. It is in a traditional sonata form—exposition, development, and recapitulation, but already shows Ravel’s distinctive harmonic colors and explorative melodic lines. Preserved in his archives, the sonata was not published until 1975 for the celebrations of Ravel’s centennial.

Sonata for Cello & Violin, M.73

The Sonata for violin and cello, composed from 1920 to 1922, represents a turning point in Ravel’s idiom when this sublimation is first evidenced. Indeed, Ravel said of the work, “The music is stripped down to the bone. The allure of harmony is rejected and increasingly there is a return of emphasis on melody.” In a composition for two soloists and without the harmonic support of a piano or orchestra, melody is an absolute must as is counterpoint between these melodies. Though the lush orchestrations are gone, many impressionistic traits remain such as modality—much of the first movement is in the Dorian mode—and the emphasis on timbre, with Ravel utilizing string techniques like pizzicato, ricochet, harmonics, and glissandi. Parallel fourths and fifths are also heard in this duo sonata. The initial inspiration for the Sonata was a special issue of La Revue Musicale which commemorated Debussy who died in 1918. The music that became the first movement appeared here in December 1920 alongside several works by other composers also written in homage. By September 1921, Ravel had decided to expand the composition to the four-movement structure we know, though not without some difficulty. Only in February 1922 had Ravel completed the Sonata, and its premiere was given in Paris that April by violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange and cellist Maurice Maréchal. 

Piano Trio in A minor, M.67

Maurice Ravel composed his Piano Trio in the spring and summer of 1914 as Europe descended into the First World War. Swept up in the fervor of the moment, Ravel rushed to complete the work in order to enlist, “working with the sureness and lucidity of a madman,” as he wrote to a friend. In a letter to Igor Stravinsky, Ravel wrote, “The idea that I should be leaving at once made me get through five months’ work in five weeks! My Trio is finished.” The 40-year-old composer served as an ambulance driver in the 13th Artillery Regiment. His age and small stature precluded him from joining the French Air Force, which had been his intention. 

     Ravel’s Piano Trio inhabits a sensuous dreamscape, far removed from politics and war. It provides a magical escape into a world of shimmering colors, exoticism, fleeting shadows, and an underlying sense of quiet lament. Ravel later noted that the first movement (Modéré) is “Basque in coloring.” In the ethereal opening measures, a theme emerges which haunts the rest of the movement. There are allusions to the asymmetrical 3+2+3 rhythm of the zortziko, a dance rhythm originating in the Basque region of France and Spain. The violin and cello are set in widely spaced octaves with the piano floating in between. The music unfolds as a dialogue, simultaneously passionate, tender, and plaintive. There are passing echoes of jazz and the Eastern sounds of the gamelan. The final bars drift off into mystery and transcendence with a turn to C major (relative to the home key of A minor).

     The second movement (Pantoum: Assez vif) is an ebullient scherzo. The title, “Pantoum,” refers to a Malaysian verse form which was popular with French nineteenth century poets such as Charles Baudelaire. In a Pantoum, the first verse’s second and fourth lines repeat as the second verse’s first and third lines. Ravel’s musical lines suggest a similar kind of overlap.

     The third movement (Passacaille: Très large) pays homage to the Baroque dance form of the passacaglia, in which variations rise above a repeating bass line. Here, the bass line grows out of the first theme of the previous movement. The music reaches a wrenching climax. A few moments later, the piano drops out and we are left with a soulful duet between the violin and cello.

     The solemnity of the third movement is broken by the glistening, fairytale magic of the opening bars of the final movement (Finale: Animé). This larger-than-life music is filled with exuberant splashes of color and shifts between irregular time signatures (5/4 and 7/4), which give us the sensation of floating through midair. The coda soars to heroic and wildly euphoric heights.

Dedicated to Ravel’s former counterpoint teacher André Gédalge, the Piano Trio was premiered in Paris on January 28, 1915.

-Timothy Judd

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic and translator. His poems exhibit mastery of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited from Romantics, and are based on observations of real life. His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-19th century. Baudelaire's original style of prose-poetry influenced a generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, among many others. He coined the term modernity (modernité) to designate the fleeting experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience.

Harmonie du soir

Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!

Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Le violon frémit comme un coeur qu'on afflige;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir.

Le violon frémit comme un coeur qu'on afflige,
Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir;
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.

Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir,
Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige...
Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!

— Charles Baudelaire

Evening Harmony

The season is at hand when swaying on its stem
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!

Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
The violin quivers like a tormented heart;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!
The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar.

The violin quivers like a tormented heart,
A tender heart, that hates the vast, black void!
The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar;
The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...

A tender heart that hates the vast, black void
Gathers up every shred of the luminous past!
The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...
Your memory in me glitters like a monstrance!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Anna, Comtesse Mathieu de Noailles (15 November 1876 – 30 April 1933) was a popular Romanian-French writer and a socialist feminist whose books sold better than Colette’s. She was the first woman to become a Commander of the Legion of Honor, the first woman to be received in the Royal Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature, and she was honored with the “Grand Prix” of the Académie Française in 1921. 

L'Ardeur

Rire ou pleurer, mais que le Coeur

Soit plein de parfums comme un vase,

Et contienne jusqu’à l’extase

La force vive ou la langueur.

Avoir la douleur ou la joie,

Pourvu que le coeur soit profond

Comme un arbre où des ailes font

Trembler le feuillage qui ploie;

S’en aller pensant ou rêvant,

Mais que le coeur donne sa sève

Et que l’âme chante et se lève

Comme une vague dans le vent.

Que le coeur s’éclaire ou se voile,

Qu’il soit sombre ou vif tour à tour,

Mais que son ombre et que son jour

Aient le soleil ou les étoiles…

Ardor 

Laugh or cry, so long as the Heart

Is full of fragrance like a vase,

And holds, ecstatically

Life force or languor.

Feel pain or joy,

Provided that the heart is deep

As a tree in which wings 

Make the leaves tremble and bend;

Go away thinking or dreaming,

So long as the heart gives its sap

And the soul sings and rises up

Like a wave in the wind.

The heart can reveal or hide itself,

In shadow or brightness turn by turn,

But its darkness and its daylight 

Hold the sun or the stars…

  - Translation by Winsome Brown

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu; with the previous English title translation of Remembrance of Things Past), originally published in French in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.

A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU

TOME I

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure. Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n’avais pas le temps de me dire: «Je m’endors.» Et, une demi-heure après, la pensée qu’il était temps de chercher le sommeil m’éveillait; je voulais poser le volume que je croyais avoir encore dans les mains et souffler ma lumière; je n’avais pas cessé en dormant de faire des réflexions sur ce que je venais de lire, mais ces réflexions avaient pris un tour un peu particulier; il me semblait que j’étais moi-même ce dont parlait l’ouvrage: une église, un quatuor, la rivalité de François Ier et de Charles Quint. Cette croyance survivait pendant quelques secondes à mon réveil; elle ne choquait pas ma raison mais pesait comme des écailles sur mes yeux et les empêchait de se rendre compte que le bougeoir n’était plus allumé. Puis elle commençait à me devenir inintelligible, comme après la métempsycose les pensées d’une existence antérieure; le sujet du livre se détachait de moi, j’étais libre de m’y appliquer ou non; aussitôt je recouvrais la vue et j’étais bien étonné de trouver autour de moi une obscurité, douce et reposante pour mes yeux, mais peut-être plus encore pour mon esprit, à qui elle apparaissait comme une chose sans cause, incompréhensible, comme une chose vraiment obscure. Je me demandais quelle heure il pouvait être; j’entendais le sifflement des trains qui, plus ou moins éloigné, comme le chant d’un oiseau dans une forêt, relevant les distances, me décrivait l’étendue de la campagne déserte où le voyageur se hâte vers la station prochaine; et le petit chemin qu’il suit va être gravé dans son souvenir par l’excitation qu’il doit à des lieux nouveaux, à des actes inaccoutumés, à la causerie récente et aux adieux sous la lampe étrangère qui le suivent encore dans le silence de la nuit, à la douceur prochaine du retour.

J’appuyais tendrement mes joues contre les belles joues de l’oreiller qui, pleines et fraîches, sont comme les joues de notre enfance. Je frottais une allumette pour regarder ma montre. Bientôt minuit. C’est l’instant où le malade, qui a été obligé de partir en voyage et a dû coucher dans un hôtel inconnu, réveillé par une crise, se réjouit en apercevant sous la porte une raie de jour. Quel bonheur, c’est déjà le matin! Dans un moment les domestiques seront levés, il pourra sonner, on viendra lui porter secours. L’espérance d’être soulagé lui donne du courage pour souffrir. Justement il a cru entendre des pas; les pas se rapprochent, puis s’éloignent. Et la raie de jour qui était sous sa porte a disparu. C’est minuit; on vient d’éteindre le gaz; le dernier domestique est parti et il faudra rester toute la nuit à souffrir sans remède.

Je me rendormais, et parfois je n’avais plus que de courts réveils d’un instant, le temps d’entendre les craquements organiques des boiseries, d’ouvrir les yeux pour fixer le kaléidoscope de l’obscurité, de goûter grâce à une lueur momentanée de conscience le sommeil où étaient plongés les meubles, la chambre, le tout dont je n’étais qu’une petite partie et à l’insensibilité duquel je retournais vite m’unir. Ou bien en dormant j’avais rejoint sans effort un âge à jamais révolu de ma vie primitive, retrouvé telle de mes terreurs enfantines comme celle que mon grand-oncle me tirât par mes boucles et qu’avait dissipée le jour,—date pour moi d’une ère nouvelle,—où on les avait coupées. J’avais oublié cet événement pendant mon sommeil, j’en retrouvais le souvenir aussitôt que j’avais réussi à m’éveiller pour échapper aux mains de mon grand-oncle, mais par mesure de précaution j’entourais complètement ma tête de mon oreiller avant de retourner dans le monde des rêves.

Quelquefois, comme Ève naquit d’une côte d’Adam, une femme naissait pendant mon sommeil d’une fausse position de ma cuisse. Formée du plaisir que j’étais sur le point de goûter, je m’imaginais que c’était elle qui me l’offrait. Mon corps qui sentait dans le sien ma propre chaleur voulait s’y rejoindre, je m’éveillais. Le reste des humains m’apparaissait comme bien lointain auprès de cette femme que j’avais quittée il y avait quelques moments à peine; ma joue était chaude encore de son baiser, mon corps courbaturé par le poids de sa taille. Si, comme il arrivait quelquefois, elle avait les traits d’une femme que j’avais connue dans la vie, j’allais me donner tout entier à ce but: la retrouver, comme ceux qui partent en voyage pour voir de leurs yeux une cité désirée et s’imaginent qu’on peut goûter dans une réalité le charme du songe. Peu à peu son souvenir s’évanouissait, j’avais oublié la fille de mon rêve.

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

OVERTURE

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed. 

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home. 

I would lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of my pillow, as plump and blooming as the cheeks of babyhood. Or I would strike a match to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an invalid, who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of daylight shewing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys! it is morning. The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring, and some one will come to look after him. The thought of being made comfortable gives him strength to endure his pain. He is certain he heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night in agony with no one to bring him any help.

I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I formed but an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very soon return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old terror of my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was effectually dispelled on the day—the dawn of a new era to me—on which they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event during my sleep; I remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in making myself wake up to escape my great-uncle's fingers; still, as a measure of precaution, I would bury the whole of my head in the pillow before returning to the world of dreams.

Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, so a woman would come into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some strain in the position of my limbs. Formed by the appetite that I was on the point of gratifying, she it was, I imagined, who offered me that gratification. My body, conscious that its own warmth was permeating hers, would strive to become one with her, and I would awake. The rest of humanity seemed very remote in comparison with this woman whose company I had left but a moment ago: my cheek was still warm with her kiss, my body bent beneath the weight of hers. If, as would sometimes happen, she had the appearance of some woman whom I had known in waking hours, I would abandon myself altogether to the sole quest of her, like people who set out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city that they have always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what has charmed their fancy. And then, gradually, the memory of her would dissolve and vanish, until I had forgotten the maiden of my dream.

- Translated from the French By C. K. Scott Moncrieff