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| compositions by maurice ravel | |
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''Le Tombeau de Couperin'' is a Suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel , composed between 1914 and 1917 . It is in six movements. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of friends of the composer who had died fighting in World War I . Ravel himself served in the war as an ambulance driver and was wounded in the process. The movements are:
::"To the memory of Lieutenant Jacques Charlot" (who transcribed Ravel's four-hand piece Ma Mère L'Oye for solo piano)
::"To the memory of Jean Cruppi" (to whose mother Ravel dedicated his opera L'heure Espagnole )
::"To the memory of Lieutenant Gabriel Deluc" (a Basque painter from Saint-Jean-de-Luz )
::"To the memory of Pierre and Pascal Gaudin" (brothers killed by the same shell)
::"To the memory of Jean Dreyfus" (at whose home Ravel recuperated after he was demobilized)
::"To the memory of Captain Joseph De Marliave " In 1919 Ravel orchestrated four movements of the work (''Prélude'', ''Forlane'', ''Menuet'' and ''Rigaudon''); this version was first performed in 1920 , and has remained one of his more popular works. Ravel transcribed many of his piano pieces for orchestra, but here he reaches the height of his orchestration skills, turning a very pianistic piece into a superb orchestral suite with very few hints of its origins. The orchestral version clarifies the harmonic language of the suite and brings sharpness to its classical dance rhythms; among the demands it places on the orchestra is the requirement for an oboe soloist of virtuosic skill. While the word-for-word meaning of the title invites the assumption that the suite is a programmatic work, describing what is seen and felt in a visit to the tomb of Couperin , ''tombeau'' is actually a musical term popular in an earlier century and meaning a piece written as a memorial. The specific Couperin (among a family noted as musicians for about two centuries) that Ravel intended to be evoked, along with the friends, would presumably be François Couperin "the Great" (1668-1733). However, Ravel stated that his intention was never to imitate or tribute Couperin himself, but rather was to pay homage to the sensibilities of the Baroque French keyboard Suite . This is reflected in the structure which imitates a Baroque dance suite. As a preparatory exercise, Ravel had transcribed a Forlane from the fourth suite of Couperin's ''Concerts Royaux'', and this piece informs Ravel's Forlane structurally. However, Ravel's neoclassicism shines through with his pointedly twentieth-century chromatic melody and piquant harmonies. When criticised for composing a light-hearted, and sometimes reflective work rather than a sombre one, for such a sombre topic, Ravel replied: "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence." David Diamond has more recently made an Orchestration of the second movement Fugue. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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