Maurice Ravel
Born 7 March 1875 in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, France; died 28 December 1937 in Paris.
Suite from Mother Goose (1908 for piano, orchestrated 1911)
PREMIERE OF WORK: Paris, 28 January 1912
Salle Gaveau
Gabriel Grovlez, conductor
APPROXIMATE DURATION: 16 minutes
INSTRUMENTATION: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, two horns, timpani, percussion, celesta, harp and strings.
“I would settle down on his lap, and tirelessly he would begin, ‘Once upon a time ...’ It was Beauty and the Beast and The Ugly Empress of the Pagodas, and, above all, the adventures of a little mouse he invented for me.” So Mimi Godebski reminisced in later years about the visits of Maurice Ravel to her family’s home during her childhood. Ravel, a contented bachelor, enjoyed these visits to the Godebskis, and took special delight in playing with the young children — cutting out paper dolls, telling stories, romping around on all fours. Young Mimi and her brother Jean were in the first stages of piano tutelage in 1908, and Ravel decided to encourage their studies by composing some little pieces for them portraying Sleeping Beauty, Hop o’ My Thumb, Empress of the Pagodas and Beauty and the Beast. To these he added an evocation of The Enchanted Garden as a postlude. In 1911, he made a ravishing orchestral transcription of the original five pieces, added to them a prelude, an opening scene and connecting interludes, and produced a ballet with a scenario based on Sleeping Beauty for the Théâtre des Arts in Paris.
The Mother Goose Suite comprises the five orchestrated movements of Ravel’s original piano version. The tiny Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty, only twenty measures long, depicts the Good Fairy, who watches over the Princess during her somnolence. Tom Thumb treats the old legend taken from Perrault’s anthology of 1697. “A boy believed,” Ravel noted of the tale, “that he could easily find his path by means of the bread crumbs which he had scattered wherever he passed; but he was very much surprised when he could not find a single crumb: the birds had come and eaten everything up.” Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas portrays a young girl cursed with ugliness by a wicked fairy. The tale, however, has a happy ending in which the Empress’ beauty is restored. In the Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, the high woodwinds sing the delicate words of the Beauty, while the Beast is portrayed by the lumbering contrabassoon. At first the two converse, politely taking turns in the dialogue, but after their betrothal, both melodies are entwined, and finally the Beast’s theme is transfigured into a floating wisp in the most ethereal reaches of the solo violin’s range. The rapt, introspective splendor of the closing Enchanted Garden is Ravel’s masterful summation of the beauty, mystery and wonder that pervade Mother Goose.
- Dr. Richard E. Rodda |