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MAURICE RAVEL Miroirs (“Mirrors”) Work Composed: 1904–05 in Contrast to the Voluptuous, Sens

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MAURICE RAVEL Miroirs (“Mirrors”) Work Composed: 1904–05 in Contrast to the Voluptuous, Sens MAURICE RAVEL Miroirs (“Mirrors”) Work composed: 1904–05 In contrast to the voluptuous, sensuous and intentionally ambiguous music of Debussy, Ravel’s compositions are precise, clear in design and economical in scoring. Nonetheless, the music of both composers — and many strikingly similar titles — clearly shares an overlapping sensibility and sense of fantasy. Ravel presented his freshly minted piano score Miroirs (“Mirrors”) to his inner circle of artist friends known collectively as the Apaches, dedicating each movement to a specific member of the tight-knit group. The five-part suite reflects the gauzy evanescence of Debussy’s impressionism while paying homage to Liszt’s pianistic pyrotechnics. The influence of Debussy is felt immediately in the first movement, Noctuelles (“Night moths”). Schumann and other composers have rhapsodized about butterflies but Ravel, who always maintained a fascination for the outré, obviously delighted in the intentional grotesqueries evoked in the music. Not coincidentally, he dedicated this piece to Léon-Paul Fargue, who authored this phrase: “The owlet-moths fly clumsily out of the old barn to drape themselves round other beams.” Rapidly scurrying passagework vividly portrays the rapidly changing flight patterns of the winged insects. In the second piece, Oiseaux tristes (“Sad Birds”), dedicated to pianist Ricardo Viñes, Ravel sought to evoke “birds lost in the torpor of a dark forest during the hottest hours of the summer,” or so the composer explained. Even so, the textures are more crisply chiseled than one might expect from the descriptive explanation. Unlike his latter compatriot, Messiaen, Ravel does not imitate bird-song but conveys an unmistakable avian aura. In Une barque sur l’océan (“A Boat on the Ocean”), dedicated to painter Paul Sordes, evolves from a flowing arpeggiated passage surrounded by melodies both above and below the rippling accompaniment. This is the longest and most technically challenging of Miroirs. Excitement mounts throughout the piece before ending calmly. La vallée des cloches (“The Valley of the Bells”), dedicated to Maurice Delage, Ravel’s first student, which revels in bell-like harmonics, suggests both Debussy, whose own Cloches à travers les feuilles (“Bells across the leaves”) was composed two years after Ravel’s piece, and Liszt’s Harmonies du soir (“Night harmonies”). A spirit of subtle refinement permeates this pianistic poem. The final movement, Alborada del gracioso is probably best-known in its independent life as an orchestral work, though it began as the fourth of five movements of Miroirs. “Alborada” refers to an “alba” or “song at dawn,” and has been traced back to the trouvéres (“troubadours”) of 11th-century southern France. At the very outset of Alborada del gracioso one can easily imagine the strumming of a flamenco guitar enhanced by insistent — if implicit — castanets. This highly rhythmic, animated opening yields to a languid middle section that intensifies in passion. A soulful passage evokes another image — the gracioso — or Spanish ‘clown’ or ‘comedian,’ a very popular character in the Spanish theater, often depicted as the fool in a household of nobles by Calderón and Lope de Vega. Whether this sad song refers to the lover as fool, or the clown in love, is open to interpretation. The fool soon forgets his love and the scintillating opening music returns to bring the work to a whirling conclusion. .
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