Mauricio Ravel: a very Spanish French composer
He was born in Ciboure, a small Basque town very close to Biarritz. His mom was Marie Delouart, a Basque, also born in Ciboure. She was a cascarote, a community based in St. Jean de Luz known for their ability for artisanal work and for dancing remarkably well the fandango.
Spain, fandango, dance: these are all essential terms to understand the life and work of Maurice Ravel. Rhythm is omnipresent throughout the marvelous pieces the French composer managed to craft. Spanish melodies and pulses are disseminated in many of his most known works, and he was also particularly gifted in writing music that was meant to be danced on the stage.
In fact, Fandango was the original title of Boléro, arguably its most popular piece.
Ravel’s fascination for the music of Spain was undoubtedly imbued by his mom, with whom he kept a close relationship all his life, and who used to sing to him Basque and Spanish lullabies when he was a baby. His mom always called him “Mauricio” in the intimacy of their home. Later in life, Ravel would also find inspiration in Chabrier and Rimsky Korsakov’s pieces dedicated to the music of Spain.
His circle of friends included Ricardo Viñes, that extraordinary Spanish pianist that played the premiere of many of Debussy and Ravel’s pieces for the instrument. Ravel was also very good friends with Manuel de Falla, the most important Spanish composer of the time. Ravel came to the defense of Falla when he was being attacked for the “overreliance on Andalusian ornaments to produce local colour” in El sombrero de tres picos.
Ravel’s argument was very French indeed since he claimed that “no one has ever blamed Massenet for filling Manon with ‘certaines formules trop françaises’; and passion event if it is expressed here less noisily and more musically that in verismo works is none the less vivid for that.”
The almost-Spanish composer began to write Spanish-influenced pieces practically since the start of his career. His first Spanish tune, according to Ravel’s biographer Roger Nichols, was Vocalise-étude en forme de Habanera, a song that resembles a lullaby and that encapsulates that particular sort of longing that is very typical of flamenco tunes. Ravel’s talent starts to reveal itself at this early stage of his career, by refining raw folkloric sonorities into the elegant aura that his upcoming material would show off in the future.
One of his first celebrated works, the piano suite Miroirs, includes Alborada del gracioso, which he later arranged for a full orchestra. This piece comprises a technically complex yet enticing set of melodies that turn the piano into some sort of marvelous guitar.
It is important to highlight Ravel’s take on the translation of the term “gracioso” when he was about to perform this piece in the United States: “The gracioso of Spanish comedy is a rather special character and one of which, so far as I know, is not found in any other theatrical tradition. We do have some sort of equivalent in the French theater: Beaumarchais’s Figaro. But he’s more philosophical, less well-meaning than his Spanish ancestor. The simplest thing, I think, is to follow the title with the rough translation ‘Morning Song of the Clown’ [Aubade du bouffon]. That will be enough to explain the piece’s humoristic style.”
Long story short, for Ravel “gracioso” possesses rather a connotation of playfulness than mere comedy, and one can definitely confirm this trait when you listen to this graceful music.
L’heure espagnole was another very important work in the Ravel catalogue. This operetta, even when it was harshly criticized at the time of its premiere, later became one of the most relevant vocal works of the French composer. Francis Poulenc even called it “a miraculous masterpiece”.
As to his intentions with this piece, Ravel acknowledged: “What I’ve tried to do is fairly ambitious: to breathe new life into the Italian opera buffa: following only the principle… the French language, like any other, has its accents and inflections of pitch… I wanted to express irony through the music above all, through harmony, rhythm and orchestration, and not, as in operetta, through arbitrary and ridiculous verbal pyrotechnics… The modern orchestra seemed to me perfectly designed for underlining and exaggerating comic effects.”
On L’heure espagnole many have pointed out the picaresque elements of Spanish culture, where emotions are hardly constrained and hence run free -with all that that implies. In this regard, as listeners we should admire the inclusion of Spanish elements as a provider of joy, which is one of the most distinctive traits in Ravel’s music.
One of the last pieces Ravel was able to compose while under the sorrowful effects of his brain disease was Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, a song cycle in which Ravel chose three Spanish rhythms for each of the songs to accentuate the whimsical profile of the main character. The first is a guajira, the second is a zortzico, and the last one features the intricate metric of the jota.
In this blog I have always been an advocate of Maurice Ravel, my favorite composer. And I have always encouraged you to listen to his music. Besides pointing out the influence of Spanish music in the French’s repertoire, with this post I also aspire to build yet another argument to invite you to delve into his fascinating music. Spanish tunes have always been fun to listen to, so I really hope that it becomes a gateway so you can enter the world that only Ravel was able to craft and which has given me so much pleasure.
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