Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré

The earliest of Ravel’s works for violin and piano was the one-movement Sonata in A minor which he wrote in 1897, when he was still a student at the Paris Conservatoire. The next, the Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré, was written as long as twenty-five years later. What had re-awakened his interest in the violin – on which he would bestow the Tzigane in 1924 and the Sonata in G minor in 1927 – was his friendship with the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. He had first met her when she took part in a performance of the Piano Trio in Paris during the War and it was partly with her in mind that he wrote the Sonata for Violin and Cello which was developed (with much difficulty) from the Duo he contributed to a special Debussy issue of the Revue musicale in 1920.

The Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré was also written for the Revue musicale which, as a tribute to the venerable composer, had invited several of his colleagues to write pieces based on a theme derived (by a common form of musical cryptography) from the twelve letters of his name. As a grateful former student of Fauré, Ravel was very willing to comply and – since he was staying at the time with one of his own pupils, Roland-Manuel, at Lyons-la-Forêt – he took the opportunity to make a lullaby out the piece and to dedicate it to Roland-Manuel’s recently born son Claude. Written in a single day and first performed by Jourdan-Morhange in December 1922, it is a tender little piece, quietly melodious and no less affectionately harmonised for the piquant dissonances which occur from time to time.