4/13/20

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Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Maurice Ravel is often regarded as the most prolific and noteworthy French composer after Claude Debussy. Famous from his works such as Bolero, Daphnis et Chloé, and the arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Ravel was genius for his style of orchestration and for his late impressionistic voice. Many of his orchestral arrangements and compositions are standard resources for orchestration courses in music schools all over the world, including my own. Today, however, I decided that we would look at perhaps his most famous work for piano, Gaspard de la nuit, which is often regarded as perhaps the hardest work to perform in piano standard repertoire. The suite is in three movements, each based on a poem from a collection of works by the French Romantic poet Aloysius Bertrand. The typical length of the piece (given that all tempo markings are observed despite how challenging) is between 20-25 minutes.

The end of the 19th century saw quite a bit of development in the world of art music, which led to very divergent paths of music throughout the 20th century. As the primary birthplace of impressionistic music, France has had a rich history of composers that know how to manipulate the harmonies and textures of music in a distinctly beautiful and mesmerizing way. This tradition likely developed as rejection or response to the Romantic (and mostly German) style, which trended towards increasingly larger and more dramatic works. Composers like Debussy and Erik Satie were pioneers of this tradition, breaking harmonic rules of the Classical and Romantic eras while also making efforts to dial back the overt drama and scope of their pieces. Maurice Ravel was a student of Gabriel Fauré (who you might recognize as a composer and as the mentor of Lili Boulanger, whose work was the topic of one of my previous posts), and thus the French style of composition is a very strong characteristic of Ravel’s writing. As seen throughout Gaspard de la nuit, clever tools which Ravel used to distinguish his sound from the Germans include dissonances that are left unresolved (creating ‘floating harmonies’ that sometimes move in patterns), brief yet intense stints of chromaticism, and parallels in voice leading (which would make the Classical composers spin in their grave). It is a product of all of these things that gives the impressionists’ writing such evocative (or sometimes exotic) sounds, painting pictures that seem to have the right forms but with strange colors.

Now that we have discussed the beauty of Ravel’s writing in Gaspard de la nuit, we have to discuss the beast that it is. The entire length of the piece is incredibly demanding of the pianist, with the first movement (Ondine) as treacherous as a mountainside after rainfall and the third (Scarbo) as intense as a heated hockey match. At the very beginning of the piece, the performer is required to play incredibly fast yet quiet repeated notes and chords - and while the effect for the listener is wonderfully delicate and mystical, the effect for the pianist is slowly burning forearm pain. The pattern continues and evolves for the entire first movement, with brief wisps of melody blooming into lush arpeggios spanning much of the piano. The experience of executing these textures up to tempo would probably be the closest many pianists get to the intense precision of a doctor operating during surgery. While the second movement (Le Gibet) acts as a brief eye of the storm, it too has quite demanding passages that are as equally exposed as the first movement. After that, we arrive upon the third movement - the depiction of a mischievous and diabolical goblin or poltergeist. This movement also features relentless repeating notes, only this time on top of break-neck speed, large reaches for the hands, and double-note scales and trills in both hands. As someone who plays piano, but not at a level anywhere close to learning this piece, I believe the only adequate description of movement III. Scarbo is “nightmare fuel.”

I have mentioned in previous posts that certain pieces are written well for their instrument - that is to say, the demands on the performer may be difficult but that they are written in a way that complements how their instrument works and sounds. Gaspard de la nuit falls under this description, but in a much more wicked way. Ravel, a pianist himself, knew very well the limitations of a piano and certainly composed this piece with that in mind. While the repeated patterns would be much more approachable on an instrument where articulations are achieved by the tongue/mouth (like with a brass instrument, for example), Ravel demands this of a pianist’s hands, alongside other elements which can truly only be executed by piano. Simply put, the piece is so incredibly demanding because it rides along (and pushes at times) the border of what is possible to play on the piano. That being said, the piece has a wonderfully distinct, impressionistic sound; it is at times mysterious and alluring, other times haunting, and downright impish in the final movement. I wish the best of luck to all pianists who set out on learning this piece - may you finish with minimal cramps and your sanity intact. Below I have linked a score video with the piece being performed by Croatian piano virtuoso, Ivo Pogorelić. So with all of that in mind, now is the time when you can sit back and listen to the beauty of this piece knowing the countless hours and gray hairs put into making a recording of such a piece.