Explore and Learn
Ravel Suite: Mother Goose
.jpg)
13/10/2007
Programme note on Ravel Suite: Mother Goose
Ravel
Suite: Mother Goose - Five Pieces for Children (1908)
I - Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant
II - Petit Poucet
III - Laideronette, Imperatrice des Pagodes
IV - Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bete
V - Le Jardin feerique
Ravel evidently loved and understood children, though he had none of his own. Shy as he was with adults, it may be that he communicated more readily with young minds. In 1908 (long before he started work on the Colette story that was to become his masterly opera of childhood, L’Enfant et les sortileges, he wrote the five piano-duet pieces that make up Mother Goose for the children of his best friends, Ida and Cipa Godebski.
Both in its original form, and in the expanded orchestral version Ravel made for a ballet premiered at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris on January 28, 1912, Ma Mere L’oye represents the composer at his charming and modestly artful best. The popular suite omits the extra movements written for the ballet and thus corresponds with the five-movement form of the original piano-duet work.
The music was designed to illustrate fairy tales by Charles Perrault and other French authors. After the Pavane of Sleeping Beauty, an enchanting curtain-raiser of remarkable economy, the halting accents of Petit Poucet depict the predicament of Tom Thumb as recounted by Perrault:
He thought he would be able to find his way easily by means of his bread, which had scattered everywhere as he went; but he was very surprised not to be able to find a single crumb; the birds had come and eaten it all.
Next comes the most vigorous movement of the five, though the vigour of this quick march is of the oriental miniature variety suggested by the title Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas, and by the superscription from the Countess d’Aulnoy’s Serpentin vert:
She undressed and got into the bath. Her attendants immediately began singing and playing instruments: some had theorbos made of nutshells, others viols made of almond shells; for the instruments had to be in proportion to their own size.
For the Dialogue of Beauty and the Beast, marked to be played in a moderate waltz tempo, Ravel takes his heading from a story by Marie Leprince de Beaumont, assigning the principal roles to the clarinet and contrabassoon:
"When I think of your good heart, you don’t seem so ugly."
"O yes, madame! My heart is good, but I am a monster."
"There are many more men more monstrous than you."
"If I were witty, I would pay you a great compliment to thank you, but I am only a beast....Beauty, will you be my wife".......
The Beast had disappeared, and she could only see before her a prince more handsome than Love who thanked her for having put an end to his enchantment.
Marked Lent e grave (Slow and serious), and enhanced by a silvery unison duet for celesta and solo violin, the concluding tableau of The Fairy Garden was written in its original form two years before the premiere of Stravinsky’s Firebird, but not orchestrated until after that event. The apotheosis of Firebird may well come to the listener’s mind as he listens to this music. Characteristically, Ravel does not attempt the wilder, more vehement flights that punctuate the Stravinsky score. But in evoking the gentler kinds of magic, and in building his music with marvellous ingenuity from a small set of basic motifs, the Frenchman fully equalled the achievement of his younger Russian colleague.
Author : Simon Lindley
Back to summary
