Miroirs

Noctuelles

Oiseaux tristes

Une barque sur l’Océan

Alborada del gracioso

La vallée des cloches

Miroirs was the next major development in Ravel’s piano music after he had completed the first authentic and sustained example of keyboard impressionism, inspired by the unpredictable play of a fountain, in Jeux d’eau in 1901. Some of the pieces in Miroirs are written in much the same impressionistic manner, like the first of them, Noctuelles, reflecting the unpredictable movements and dissonant collisions of large moths in flight. Others are more subjective. Oiseaux tristes - its lonely bird calls and oppressive harmonies evoking “birds lost in the torpor of a very dark forest at the hottest time of summer” - is so intimately spontaneous that, in emulation of a recent piece by Debussy, it might well have been torn “from the pages of a sketchbook.”

Une Barque sur l’océan is another study in water impressionism, comparable to Jeux d’eau in technique but anticipatory of Debussy’s La Mer in its structural breadth and the variety of sounds and sensations observed from a small boat on an intermittently squally sea. If Alborada del gracioso, a “jester’s morning serenade,” seems out place in this company, brilliant though it is, it could be because it derives from a Spanish serenade concept Ravel had explored more than ten years earlier in his Sérénade grotesque. In this case it is a vigorous seguidilla articulated in guitar-like figuration and offset, after a short pause, by expressive if caricatured vocal melody. La Vallée des cloches, on the other hand, is pure impressionism, a counterpoint of bells, each with its own sound and rhythm, merging from different directions round a middle section of masterfully sustained melody.

Miroirs was first performed, to a largely uncomprehending audience, in the Salle Erard in Paris in January 1906.

Noctuelles

Oiseaux tristes

Une barque sur l’Océan

Alborada del gracioso

La vallée des cloches

Miroirs was the next major development in Ravel’s piano music after he had completed the first authentic and sustained example of keyboard impressionism, inspired by the unpredictable play of a fountain, in Jeux d’eau in 1901. Some of the pieces in Miroirs are written in much the same impressionistic manner, like the first of them, Noctuelles, reflecting the unpredictable movements and dissonant collisions of large moths in flight.The instability is such, in fact, that Ravel introduced a slow middle section firmly grounded on a harmonic pedal point to stop the piece floating away. Others are more subjective. Oiseaux tristes – its lonely bird calls and oppressive harmonies evoking “birds lost in the torpor of a very dark forest at the hottest time of summer” – is so intimately spontaneous that, in emulation of a recent piece by Debussy, it might well have been torn “from the pages of a sketchbook.”

Une Barque sur l’océan is another study in water impressionism, comparable to Jeux d’eau in technique but anticipatory of Debussy’s La Mer in its structural breadth and the variety of sounds and sensations observed, in this case, from a small boat on an intermittently squally sea. If Alborada del gracioso, a “jester’s morning serenade,” seems out place in this company, brilliant though it is, it could be because it derives from a Spanish serenade concept Ravel had explored more than ten years earlier in his Sérénade grotesque. In this case it is a vigorous seguidilla articulated in guitar-like figuration and offset, after a short pause, by expressive if caricatured vocal melody. The idea achieved its final realisation in the orchestral version of this piece – with an eloquent bassoon as the gracioso – arranged by the composer himself thirteen years later

Vallée des cloches (“Valley of the bells”) is also a return to an earlier concept, this one having been first tried out in 1897 in Entre cloches, the highly clangourous partner of Habanera in Sites auriculaires. Though based on the same idea of a counterpoint of bell sounds merging from different directions and though based on the same kind of harmonies and similar pedal points, Vallée des cloches is a very much more poetic and persuasive composition than the discarded Entre Cloches. The sonorously harmonised middle section enshrines one of the most sustained melodies to be found anywhere in Ravel’s music.

Miroirs was first performed, to a largely uncomprehending audience, in the Salle Erard in Paris in January 1906.

Noctuelles

Oiseaux tristes

Une barque sur l’Océan

Alborada del gracioso

La vallée des cloches

The first of the Miroirs in order of composition, Oiseaux tristes, was written in 1904, at about the same time as Ravel heard from his pianist friend Ricardo Viñes that Debussy “was dreaming of writing music so free in form that it would seem to be improvised, of creating pieces which might have been torn out of a sketch book.” Ravel not only expressed his agreement with Debussy but also revealed that he was actually working on such a piece at the time. “I would really like to do something that would liberate me from Jeux d’eau,” he said.

Not all the pieces in Miroirs are as far from Jeux d’eau as Oiseaux tristes. Noctuelles is based on a line by the composer’s friend, Léon-Paul Fargue: “The moths which take clumsy flight from a barn to tie themselves to other beams.” The piano technique and the sounds in the outer sections are basically those of Jeux d’eau, however. It is the unpredictable fluttering motion which is different. The instability is such, in fact, that Ravel introduced a slow middle section firmly grounded on a harmonic pedal point to stop the piece floating away.

According to the composer, Oiseaux tristes “evokes birds lost in the torpor of a very dark forest at the hottest time of summer.” It is so far from Jeux d’eau that the repeated notes associated with the song of the blackbird, which echo through the piece from the first bar to the last, anticipate the tolling bell of Le Gibet in Gaspard de la nuit. The atmosphere here, with the hot-house harmonies and the confining rhythmic ostinato, is very much more sultry however. It would have been this piece rather than anything else in Miroirs which, in the composer’s words, “disconcerted those musicians who were most familiar with my style up to that point.”

Une Barque sur l’Océan, an exact contemporary and close equivalent of Debussy’s La Mer, resumes the splashing figuration of Jeux d’eau. At first it seems that the boat is rocking gently at its moorings: the opening theme is repeated over and over again at the same pitch and against much the same A major arpeggios before getting into deeper harmonic water. Winds, signalled by double-trilled crescendos high in the right hand, carry it into swirling squalls. An apparent restoration of tranquillity, with the rocking motif now in E major, proves to be illusory. It is only in the last bars that the theme return to the security of A major.

Alborada del gracioso derives from a concept Ravel had explored as long as twelve years earlier in his Sérénade grotesque, which is also vigorous Spanish dance music articulated in guitar-like figuration and offset by expressive if caricatured vocal melody. Presented very much more effectively in Alborada del gracioso as a seguidilla in the outer sections and a copla in the middle, the idea achieved its final realisation in the orchestral version of this piece – with an eloquent bassoon as the gracioso – arranged by the composer himself thirteen years later.

Vallée des cloches (“Valley of the bells”) is also a return to an earlier concept, this one having been first tried out in 1897 in Entre cloches, the highly clangourous partner of Habanera in Sites auriculaires. Though based on the same idea of a counterpoint of bell sounds merging from different directions and though based on the same quartal harmonies and similar pedal points, Vallée des cloches is a very much more poetic and persuasive composition than the discarded Entre Cloches. The sonorously harmonised middle section enshrines one of the most sustained melodies to be found anywhere in Ravel’s music.