Daphnis et Chloé

Suite No.1: Nocturne - Interlude - Danse guerrière

Suite No.2: Lever du jour - Pantomime - Danse générale

Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé is set not so much in ancient Greece

as, according to the composer, “the Greece of my dreams, which is not unlike that imagined and depicted by French artists at the end of the eighteenth century.” The Greece imagined by the Russian choreographer Mikhail Fokin, who had drawn his scenario from an erotic romance by the second-century Greek poet Longus, was rather different and not, in the first place, entirely to the composer’s taste. But, reluctant to turn down a commission from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which was the most exciting artistic development of the time, he worked with Fokin on the scenario and finally got it adapted to suit his idealised, neo-classical view of antiquity. Longus’s account of the pagan passion of Daphnis and Chloé, a goatherd and a shepherdess on the Isle of Lesbos, became a tender love story in which the hero and heroine meet in no more than three chaste embraces.

Even then, although Daphnis et Chloé was originally scheduled for first performance in Paris in 1910, the score would be finished only just in time for the Ballets Russes season at the Théâtre du Châtelet two years later. Ravel still had two big problems. The first was to think in terms of what he called “a vast musical fresco” when it was his natural inclination to work on a smaller scale. The other, and much the more troublesome, was finding a musical equivalent to the one remaining element of pagan sensuality, the frenzied bacchanal (Danse générale) at the end. While he was in despair about the last scene, however, he was so happy with what he had written for the first two that he allowed a sizeable chunk of it to be performed in an orchestral concert at the Châtelet in 1911.

That extract - now known as Suite No.1 although it is taken straight out of the ballet score without cuts - begins with a Nocturne set in a grotto dedicated to the god Pan and guarded by three stone nymphs. Chloé has been abducted by pirates and Daphnis is lying in a faint on the ground. After an introduction of scarcely perceptible string tremolandos, the three nymphs - represented in turn by a flute, a muted horn and a clarinet - descend from their pedestals and begin a mysterious dance coloured here and there by the whisper of a wind machine. Noticing Daphnis, who is identified by a short but expressive theme on clarinet, they take pity on him and invoke the god Pan on his behalf. As Daphnis addresses his prayer to the god silence falls and an unaccompanied, wordless choral Interlude poetically effects a change of scene from the grotto to the pirates’ camp. Their entry signalled by offstage horn and trumpet calls, the pirates are busy unloading their booty - but not too busy to join in a vigorous, ever more animated Danse guerrière (or Warriors’ Dance) which is so primitive in its ferocity at one point as to anticipate an episode in The Rite of Spring.

The Second Suite comprises the whole of the third and last scene of the ballet. Daphnis is still lying unconscious in the grotto when a new day dawns (Lever du jour). Dew runs off the rocks on rippling flutes and clarinets; the sun rises from the bass of the orchestra gradually to assume its full melodic shape; birds sing their dawn chorus on flutes and violins; shepherds play their pipes in the distance. As Daphnis is awakened and re-united with Chloé, who has been rescued from the pirates through the intervention of Pan, their love theme is heard on unison strings with the dew still rustling on woodwind.

An old shepherd explains that if Pan saved Chloé it was in memory of Syrinx, a nymph the god once loved. In a Pantomime the lovers re-enact the story, dancing together for once, but only briefly even now: the nymph eludes the god’s advances and disappears into a reed bed. Daphnis takes a pan-pipe fashioned from the reeds to express the god’s sorrow and frustration while Chloé gives expression to his eloquent flute solo in an increasingly animated dance. Exhausted she sinks into Daphnis’s arms, provoking a last full-scale treatment of their theme.

There are glimpses of Daphnis and Chloé in the final celebrations but they, like everyone else, are carried away by the Danse générale - its “whirlpool” choreography propelled by the quintuple-time impulse which (with some help from Rimsky-Korsakov) was Ravel’s last-minute solution to the problem of stimulating and sustaining an authentically and vociferously orgiastic bacchanal.

Gerald Larner©2005

Ravel suffered agonies in writing Daphnis et Chloé, effortless masterpiece though it might appear to be. Commissioned by Diaghilev well before its scheduled first performance in Paris in 1910, the score was completed only just in time for the Ballets Russes season at the Théâtre du Châtelet two years later. In the meantime - to put Ravel’s efforts in their context - Stravinsky had supplied Diaghilev not only with The Firebird, to replace Daphnis et Chloé in 1910, but also with Petrushka for his 1911 Paris season and had got well started on The Rite of Spring.

When he agreed to write the ballet for Diaghilev in June 1909 Ravel undertook for the first time in his career to work on a subject not of his own choosing. From his earliest discussions with the choreographer Michael Fokine, who had adapted the scenario from an erotic pastoral romance by the second-century Greek poet Longus, he had serious doubts about it. Having got the scenario more to his liking, he still had to face problems which he had so far avoided in his music. Since neither sexual passion nor religious sentiment came easily to him, progress on a ballet so intimately concerned with both was necessarily slow. He had no experience either of working on the epic scale required by Fokine’s structural concept of the piece. Although he had completed a first version of his “vast musical fresco” by May 1910, it was not until nearly two years later, after spending several months revising the finale - which is now twice as long as it was in 1910 and more than twice as dangerous - that he was reasonably satisfied with his score.

The first performance of Daphnis et Chloé at the Châtelet on 8 June 1912, with Nijinksy and Karsavina in the title roles, was not a great success. Always a “stepchild of the company” - as Fokine described it in his irritation at the disproportionate rehearsal time awarded by Diaghilev to Nijinsky’s choreography for Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune - it was comprehensively upstaged by the very much more explicit interpretation of pagan sexuality displayed by its shorter but instantly notorious programme companion.

Part One

As the curtain rises on the opening scene, the most important features of which are a grotto with three stone nymphs at the entrance and a nearby rock vaguely resembling the shape of the god Pan, the orchestra introduces the three main themes of the work. Two of them, a distantly echoing motif on three horns - soon to be taken up by an ardent (but always wordless) chorus - and an elaborate reed-pipe call high on a solo flute, are usually heard together and, being associated with Pan and the nymphs, represent the religious element in the story. The other theme, introduced by first horn and always recognisable by the voluptuous fall and yearning rise of its melodic line, is associated with Daphnis and Chloé and represents the erotic element.

Extraordinarily, although the two lovers are linked from the beginning by the romantic theme they have in common, there is no pas de deux for them throughout the ballet. They are glimpsed separately in a chastely supple Religious Dance for their shepherd and shepherdess companions and they appear together for the first time, with their theme on woodwind, as they make their obeisance at the altar of the nymphs. The next two dances, both of them in septuple time, in which playful shepherdess turn their attentions to Daphnis and sensuous shepherds turn theirs to Chloé, are designed to make both of them jealous rather than bring them together. After a contest between the grotesque cowherd Dorcon (on three bassoons) and the graceful Daphnis (on three flutes) for the favour of a kiss from Chloé, the lovers are united again - this time with their theme very quietly but none the less expressively presented on unison strings.

After that, until the last scene, they are each on their own. Introduced by a cadenza for two clarinets, a shepherdess more experienced than Chloé attempts to seduce Daphnis but, in spite of her use of a flute melody based on the love theme, she fails. Pirates, whose surprise attack is signalled by fanfares on horns and trombones, enter in pursuit of the hapless Chloé and, in spite of her appeal to the nymphs for protection, succeed in abducting her. To a fortissimo version of one of their own themes Daphnis curses the nymphs who failed her and falls to the ground in a faint. The three nymphs - represented in turn by cadenzas on the same theme by a flute, a muted horn and a clarinet - descend from their pedestals and begin a mysterious dance coloured here and there by the whisper of a wind machine. Taking pity on Daphnis, who is identified by a short but expressive theme on clarinet, they invoke Pan on his behalf. As Daphnis addresses his prayer to the god silence falls…

Part two

An unaccompanied (and still wordless) choral interlude based on the echo theme poetically links that divine intervention to a scene in a pirate camp echoing with horn and trumpet calls. The pirates are busy unloading their booty, but not too busy to join in an extended, vigorous and ever more animated Warriors’ Dance which is so primitive in its ferocity at one point as to anticipate an episode in The Rite of Spring. The entrance of Chloé is identified by a plaintive variant of the love theme on muted violins. Ordered to dance, she displays her reluctance by slowing down the tempo every other bar while a cor anglais gives eloquent voice to her private feelings. Her attempts to escape are twice thwarted and she is saved from the rapacious intentions of the pirate chief only by the eerily orchestrated entrance of Pan. His army of satyrs, formidably equipped with brass and percussion, rout the pirates and return Chloé to the grotto of the nymphs.

Part Three

At the wonderfully scored opening of the third scene - with flutes and clarinets rippling like the dew running off the rocks, with the sunrise represented by a melody emerging from the bass of the orchestra and gradually assuming its authentic shape, with dawn-chorus birdsong on flutes and violins and with shepherds playing their pipes in the distance - Daphnis is still unconscious in the grotto of the nymphs. When he is awakened and re-united with Chloé their theme appears on unison strings again but louder this time and with the dew still rustling on woodwind.

An old shepherd with a repetitive oboe explains that if Pan saved Chloé it was in memory of Syrinx, the nymph the god once loved. So Daphnis and Chloé re-enact the story - dancing together but as Pan and Syrinx rather than as themselves and only briefly before the nymph eludes the god’s advances and disappears into a reed bed. Daphnis takes a pan-pipe fashioned from the reeds to reflect the god’s sorrow and frustration while Chloé gives expression to his eloquent flute solo in an increasingly animated dance. Exhausted, she sinks into Daphnis’s arms, which provokes a last full-scale treatment of their theme.

There are glimpses of Daphnis and Chloe in the final celebrations but they, like everyone else, are carried away by the General Dance - Fokine’s “whirlpool” choreography propelled by the quintuple-time impulse which was Ravel’s last-minute solution to the problem of stimulating and sustaining an authentically orgiastic bacchanal. Asked how he was eventually able to complete the finale after he had so long despaired of it, Ravel replied, “It’s quite simple: I put Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade on the piano and copied it.”

Gerald Larner ©2003

Ravel suffered agonies in writing Daphnis et Chloé, effortless masterpiece though it might appear to be. Commissioned by Diaghilev well before its scheduled first performance in Paris in 1910, the score was completed only just in time for the Ballets Russes season at the Théâtre du Châtelet two years later. In the meantime – to put Ravel’s efforts in their context –    Stravinsky had supplied Diaghilev not only with The Firebird, to replace Daphnis et Chloé in 1910, but also with Petrushka for his 1911 Paris season and had got well started on The Rite of Spring.

When he agreed to write the ballet for Diaghilev in June 1909 Ravel undertook for the first time in his career to work on a subject not of his own choosing. From his earliest discussions with the choreographer Michael Fokine, who had adapted the scenario from an erotic pastoral romance by the second-century Greek poet Longus, he had serious doubts about it. Having got the scenario more to his liking, he still had to face problems which he had so far avoided in his music. Since neither sexual passion nor religious sentiment came easily to him, progress on a ballet so intimately concerned with both was necessarily slow. He had no experience either of working on the epic scale required by Fokine’s structural concept of the piece. Although he had completed a first version of his “vast musical fresco” by May 1910, it was not until nearly two years later, after spending several months revising the finale – which is now twice as long as it was in 1910 and more than twice as dangerous – that he was reasonably satisfied with his score.

The first performance of Daphnis et Chloé at the Châtelet on 8 June 1912, with Nijinksy and Karsavina in the title roles, was not a great success. Always a “stepchild of the company” – as Fokine described it in his irritation at the disproportionate rehearsal time awarded by Diaghilev to Nijinsky’s choreography for Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune – it was comprehensively upstaged by the very much more explicit interpretation of pagan sexuality displayed by its shorter but instantly notorious programme companion.

Part One

As the curtain rises on the opening scene, the most important features of which are a grotto with three stone nymphs at the entrance and a nearby rock vaguely resembling the shape of the god Pan, the orchestra introduces the three main themes of the work. Two of them, a distantly echoing motif on three horns – soon to be taken up by an ardent (but always wordless) chorus – and an elaborate reed-pipe call high on a solo flute, are usually heard together and, being associated with Pan and the nymphs, represent the religious element in the story. The other theme, introduced by first horn and always recognisable by the voluptuous fall and yearning rise of its melodic line, is associated with Daphnis and Chloé and represents the erotic element.

Extraordinarily, although the two lovers are linked from the beginning by the romantic theme they have in common, there is no pas de deux for them throughout the ballet. They are glimpsed separately in a chastely supple Religious Dance for their shepherd and shepherdess companions and they appear together for the first time, with their theme on woodwind, as they make their obeisance at the altar of the nymphs. The next two dances, both of them in septuple time, in which playful shepherdess turn their attentions to Daphnis and sensuous shepherds turn theirs to Chloé, are designed to make both of them jealous rather than bring them together. After an unequal contest between the grotesque cowherd Dorcon (on three bassoons) and the graceful Daphnis (on three flutes) for the favour of a kiss from Chloé, the lovers are united again – this time with their theme very quietly but none the less expressively presented on unison strings.

After that, until the last scene, they are each on their own. Introduced by a cadenza for two clarinets, a shepherdess more experienced than Chloé attempts to seduce Daphnis but, in spite of her use of a flute melody based on the love theme, she fails. Pirates, whose surprise attack is signalled by fanfares on horns and trombones, enter in pursuit of the hapless Chloé and, in spite of her appeal to the nymphs for protection, succeed in abducting her. To a fortissimo version of one of their own themes Daphnis curses the nymphs who failed her and falls to the ground in a faint. The three nymphs – represented in turn by cadenzas on the same theme by a flute, a muted horn and a clarinet – descend from their pedestals and begin a mysterious dance coloured here and there by the whisper of a wind machine. Taking pity on Daphnis, who is identified by a short but expressive theme on clarinet, they invoke Pan on his behalf. As Daphnis addresses his prayer to the god, silence falls…

Part two

An unaccompanied (and still wordless) choral interlude based on the echo theme poetically links that divine intervention to a scene in a pirate camp echoing with horn and trumpet calls. The pirates are busy unloading their booty, but not too busy to join in an extended, vigorous and ever more animated Warriors’ Dance which is so primitive in its ferocity at one point as to anticipate an episode in The Rite of Spring. The entrance of Chloé is identified by a plaintive variant of the love theme on muted violins. Ordered to dance, she displays her reluctance by slowing down the tempo every other bar while a cor anglais gives eloquent voice to her private feelings. Her attempts to escape are twice thwarted and she is saved from the rapacious intentions of the pirate chief only by the eerily orchestrated entrance of Pan. His army of satyrs, formidably equipped with brass and percussion, rout the pirates and return Chloé to the grotto of the nymphs.

Part Three

At the wonderfully scored opening of the third scene – with flutes and clarinets rippling like the dew running off the rocks, with the sunrise represented by a melody emerging from the bass of the orchestra and gradually assuming its authentic shape, with dawn-chorus birdsong on flutes and violins and with shepherds playing their pipes in the distance – Daphnis is still unconscious in the grotto of the nymphs. When he is awakened and re-united with Chloé their theme appears on unison strings again but louder this time and with the dew still rustling on woodwind.

An old shepherd with a repetitive oboe explains that if Pan saved Chloé it was in memory of Syrinx, the nymph the god once loved. So Daphnis and Chloé re-enact the story – dancing together but as Pan and Syrinx rather than as themselves and only briefly before the nymph eludes the god’s advances and disappears into a reed bed. Daphnis takes a pan-pipe fashioned from the reeds to reflect the god’s sorrow and frustration while Chloé gives expression to his eloquent flute solo in an increasingly animated dance. Exhausted, she sinks into Daphnis’s arms, which provokes a last full-scale treatment of their theme.

There are glimpses of Daphnis and Chloe in the final celebrations but they, like everyone else, are carried away by the General Dance – Fokine’s “whirlpool” choreography propelled by the quintuple-time impulse which was Ravel’s last-minute solution to the problem of stimulating and sustaining an authentically orgiastic bacchanal. Asked how he was eventually able to complete the finale after he had so long despaired of it, Ravel replied, “It’s quite simple: I put Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade on the piano and copied it.”

Gerald Larner ©2011