Musical Poignancy and Melancholy

Maurice Ravel was born on this day in 1875 in France. His music is on the whole very poignant, sad and melancholy, yet rich, beautiful, and moving. Of the lesser known composers (i.e. less famous than Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, etc.) he is probably my favorite. Many of his works touch me very deeply and leave me with a feeling that is hard to describe. He is commonly compared with Debussy and the impressionistic style, but to me he has a more distinct and rich, fiery sound than Debussy.

Aside from writing a lot of terrific piano music, he was a master of orchestration. He was extremely skilled in knowing what instruments to use to get all sorts of interesting and exotic sounds. His most famous work is "Bolero". I read somewhere he rather despised this composition, and said that it was "orchestral tissue without music." It starts out really soft, repeating the same theme over and over, each time louder and louder, until the bombastic crash-like ending. Once you listen to it, you can't get the melody out of your head for days.

Ravel wrote two piano concertos, one for the left hand alone, and one for both hands. The Concerto in G Major (for both hands) is very jazzy, and mostly light-hearted and joking... except for the 2nd movement, an extremely wistful, nostalgic piece. It starts with piano alone for a few minutes, then adds orchestra, builds up to a climax, and then softly repeats the theme in orchestra with beautiful flowing piano accompaniment in the high register. A must listen! Listen to the 1st and 3rd movements, too, if you like.

His Concerto for the Left Hand is a one-movement piece written for a pianist friend of Ravel's who lost his right arm in World War I. Where Ravel's other concerto was light-hearted and full of humor, this piece is much darker, brooding, and melancholy, yet very powerful. There are many places in the orchestration that sound like Bolero to me. The piece begins with lots of low rumblings, including a bassoon solo in the very low register (and thus is hard to hear well on youtube unfortunately). The orchestra builds and suddenly cuts off, leaving a powerful piano cadenza, which climbs to a reintroduction of the theme with the full orchestra, and it goes on from there. Listen here to the 1st part and 2nd part. On the 1st part, listen especially to around 6:50, where the piano has an expressive, beautiful theme. The 2nd part starts right at the fast, rhythmic part of the piece, where there is a dancing theme in the piano, but eventually another theme started by the bassoon starts up (in a completely different time-signature!) and the two themes continue on and build together to a climax (crazy rhythms!). Listen again to around 6:45, where the piano repeats that expressive, beautiful theme (from part 1, 6:50) in a more flowery way. The pianist featured here is the legendary Leon Fleisher, a world-renown artist who had problems with his right hand curling up on him spontaneously. He refused to give up, and became a conductor and pianist for the left-hand literature (there's actually quite a few pieces for left hand alone). Then just a few years ago (he's now in his 80's), after trying every therapy known to man, he finally found something that works for him - botox injections! It seems he has a very rare neurological disorder called a focal dystonia in his right hand only, and botox seems to do the trick.

One of Ravel's finest chamber pieces is his Piano Trio. Listen here to the 1st movement and 3rd movement. This piece always brings me to tears. There is something nostalgic in it that touches me deeply. Especially the 3rd movment.

Moving on to Ravel's solo piano music, it's hard for me to narrow down what I want to link to. Here's a selection of some of my favorites:

- Sonatine, 1st movement, a piece with very beautiful harmonies and a wistful tone throughout. It is played here by Vlado Perlemuter, a French pianist who studied Ravel's piano works with Ravel himself after meeting the composer in 1925, thereafter becoming an expert in Ravel's music. Perlemuter died in 2002 at the age of 98.
- Pavane for a Dead Princess, one of his most famous piano pieces, is an extremely beautiful, slow, reflective piece. The title refers not to a funeral piece, but instead it is an elegant dance written in memory of the dance that a Spanish princess would do during a formal ceremony of reception at the royal court. Ravel was not in favor of playing this piece too slowly or plodding, and once told a pianist he heard play it that it was called "Pavane for Dead Princess" not "Dead Pavane for a Princess."
- Le Tombeau de Couperin, a wonderful little suite of pieces written (as the pianist states) to commemorate harpsichord composers in the 18th century (such as Francois Couperin). The pieces are full of interesting harmonies, beautiful melodies, and lush, jazz-like chords.
- Gaspard de la nuit is a suite of three piano pieces based on poems. I'm currently working on playing the first piece, Ondine. It is one of Ravel's most beautiful pieces, full of striking harmonies, flowery arpeggios, lush sounds, and a repeated chord motif in the right hand throughout. The 3rd piece in the set, Scarbo, is considered by some to be the most difficult piano piece ever written. It depicts a very active little dwarf-goblin who gets into mischief and scares people while they're sleeping. Scarbo is a little hard to listen to at first - although extremely impressive, it's very modern and dissonant (and downright frightening!), but Ondine is very beautiful and one of my favorites.

There are several other pieces Ravel wrote, including Jeux deau ("Water at play"), Miroirs, Valses nobles et sentimentales ("Noble and Sentimental Waltzes"), and the list goes on. He also orchestrated a wonderful piece by Mussorgsky called "Pictures at an Exhibition" but I'll discuss that on Mussorgsky's birthday (coming soon...).