Ravinia 2019, Issue 3, Week 6

MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937) Suite from Ma mère l’oye ( Mother Goose ) Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, two horns, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, xylophone, glockenspiel, celesta, harp, and strings Few people encountered the childlike inno- cence hidden beneath Ravel’s well-manicured, staid exterior. The Belgian musicologist, critic, and composer Roland-Manuel described his dualistic personality as “ ‘naturally artificial’: in one sense child, in another dandy.” Toys, espe- cially miniature replicas and mechanical gad- gets, fascinated Ravel. He derived much satis- faction from surprising friends with small gifts, especially kitschy reproductions of Baroque or Rococo jewelry. Simple magic tricks formed part of his playful entertainment routine. (Ro- land-Manuel commented that his “slender and active hands were admirable for either pianist or conjurer.”) Several acquaintances remembered Ravel disappearing at parties to play games with children. Ma mère l’oye ( Mother Goose ) offers a glimpse into this hidden world. In this composition, Ravel translated five stories he regularly recited to the children of Cipa and Ida Godebski—Mimi and Jean—into musical form. Mimi fondly re- called the composer’s visits to her home: “Of all my parents’ friends, I had a predilection for Rav- el because he used to tell me stories that I loved. I used to climb on his knee and indefatigably he would begin, ‘Once upon a time … ’ ” This be- loved guest, who completed the four-hand piano cycle between 1908 and 1910, dedicated the score to the Godebski children. Ravel borrowed from various fairy tale sources in Ma mère l’oye . The collection’s title is derived from Contes de ma mère l’oye ( Tales of Mother Goose , 1697) by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), as did the opening two pieces: the wistful Pavane de la belle au bois dormant ( Pavane for the Sleep- ing Beauty ) and Petit poucet ( Tom Thumb ), in which the miniature man—perhaps an autobi- ographical representation of the smallish com- poser—follows a trail of bread crumbs out of the woods. Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes ( Laid- eronnette, Empress of the Pagodes ), one of Mimi Godebska’s favorite stories, comes from the Serpentin vert by Marie Catherine, Comtesse d’Aulnoy (1650–1705). An evil fairy condemns an Asian princess to a life of ugliness. The curse is broken only when the young princess marries a green snake. Her beauty is restored, and the snake turns into a handsome prince. The term “pagode” evidently refers not to the Asian-style building (pagoda) but to a musical instrument that the princess had mastered. Ravel’s music employs a pentatonic scale (restricted to black keys on the piano), which is used in some Asian music. Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711–80) published La belle et la bête in 1757 as a moral- izing children’s tale in the Magasin des enfants . Ravel portrayed a dialogue between the kind beauty and the ill-mannered beast in Les entre- tiens de la belle et de la bête ( Conversation be- tween the Beauty and the Beast ). His concluding piece, the brilliant Le jardin féerique ( The En- chanted Garden ), captures the magical moment when these misfit characters discover love and the beast transforms into a handsome prince. Ravel composed Ma mère l’oye in part to “recap- ture the poetry of childhood, simplify my style, and thin out my writing.” To convey the music’s naiveté, he hoped that the Godebski children would give the premiere at the inaugural con- cert of the Société Musicale Indépendante on April 20, 1910. This plan never came to pass, as Mimi explained: “My brother, being less tim- id and more gifted on the piano, coped quite well. But despite lessons from Ravel, I used to freeze to such an extent that the idea had to be abandoned.” Instead, two other child perform- ers—Jeanne Leleu and Geneviève Durony—in- troduced the new work. Ravel orchestrated this suite as a ballet score in 1911, adding a prelude and various interludes and reordering the origi- nal sequence of movements. IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) Suite from The Firebird (1919 version) Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, xylophone, harp, piano, and strings Russian legend tells of the evil, grotesque Kash- chei, who abducts unsuspecting maidens and turns young men into stone. The immortal Kashchei dwells within a magic garden, his soul locked away in an egg-shaped chest. A kind-spir- ited firebird glides among the golden apple trees. One night, Prince Ivan Tsarevich wanders into the garden and plucks a feather from the fire- bird. Ivan falls in love with a captive maiden. At daybreak, he follows her into Kashchei’s palace, only to be seized by the guards. Moments before being turned to stone, the prince pulls out the magical feather. The firebird appears and tells Ivan of Kashchei’s secret chest. Ivan destroys the egg, and the wicked overlord vanishes. Choreographer Mikhail Fokine proposed the scenario in 1909 to Sergei Diaghilev, impresa- rio and founder of the Ballets Russes. The folk tale intrigued Diaghilev enough to schedule the imagined ballet for the 1910 season. He originally offered the ballet commission to Anatol Liadov, professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, but he proved a ponderously slow worker. Sec- ond choice fell on the up-and-coming composer Igor Stravinsky. The success of this ballet score and the two that followed ( Petrushka and The Rite of Spring ) catapulted Stravinsky to interna- tional acclaim. A year after the Firebird ballet premiered at Paris’s Théâtre de l’Opéra on June 25, 1910, Stravinsky extracted five pieces from his bril- liantly orchestrated score as a concert suite for large orchestra; the instrumentation is roughly Maurice Ravel Igor Stravinsky (1913) Léon Bakst’s illustration of Prince Ivan Tsarevich capturing the Firebird (1915) JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 99