Program Notes: Ravel Mother Goose

GABRIEL FAURÉ  
Pelléas et Mélisande Suite, Op. 80 
BORN: May 12, 1845, in Pamiers, France 
DIED: November 4, 1924, in Paris, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 1898 
WORLD PREMIERE: June 21, 1898, at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, with the composer conducting. 

What to Listen For:  

• Fauré’s orchestration and dramatic thrust, such as the soft horn call, as if from a distance, at the end of the Prélude; the way the rhythm imitates the motion of a spinning wheel in Fileuse; the accompaniment of the harp and strings for the flute solo in the Sicilienne; and the development of Mélisande’s lament in the final movement. 

Fauré’s orchestration and dramatic thrust, such as the soft horn call, as if from a distance, at the end of the Prélude; the way the rhythm imitates the motion of a spinning wheel in Fileuse; the accompaniment of the harp and strings for the flute solo in the Sicilienne; and the development of Mélisande’s lament in the final movement. 

We know Gabriel Fauré as the composer of the beautifully serene Requiem — and of some 100 refined art songs — but his lesser-known Pelléas et Mélisande is his orchestral masterpiece, even if it lurks in the shadows of Debussy’s opera, also adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 Symbolist play of that name. 

This all-French program includes Pelléas and two important works by Maurice Ravel, who studied with Fauré at the Paris Conservatoire, where the latter taught composition from 1896 to 1905.

In 1898, Fauré had received a commission from the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell to compose incidental music for the English-language London premiere of the play — a tragedy about the doomed love between its title characters. The composer restored and adapted some previous music he’d written, and even relegated the orchestration to Charles Koechlin, one of his students. The music we’ll hear tonight is a four-part suite assembled from the incidental music, this time orchestrated by Fauré himself, calling for a larger orchestra with a second oboe, second bassoon, and third and fourth horns.  

The lush strings of the Prélude set the mood of a forest scene where the fragile, introverted Mélisande has lost her crown in the water. Prince Golaud, lost in the forest, comes upon Mélisande. Near the end, we hear a solo horn — Golaud’s hunting horn — and doleful passages for solo cello and clarinet. The short Fileuse depicts Mélisande at her spinning wheel. A gentle solo oboe is accompanied by strings and musings from the clarinet, bassoon and flute, with slight accents in the rhythm suggesting the spinning of the wheel.    

A downcast but not hopeless solo flute in G-minor flanks the Sicilienne. It’s the most memorable theme in the suite, supported by harp and echoed by the strings, illustrating the love between Pelléas and Mélisande. But it’s not meant to last; when we get to The Death of Mélisande, we are gripped by Fauré’s depiction of the couple’s fated union. The opening dirge for clarinets and flutes is followed by a quietly mourning theme for strings that is picked up by a solo flute. It is nearly heartbreaking, clearly expressed music, which was played at the composer’s funeral in 1924. 

BENJAMIN ATTAHIR 
Hanoï Songs  
BORN: February 25, 1989, in Toulouse, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 2024 
WORLD PREMIERE: January 30, 2025, at Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot. 

Benjamin Attahir studied violin at the Conservatoire de Toulouse and later fell under the spell of composing his own music. Like his musical forebears in this program, he later attended the Paris Conservatoire and also took invaluable pointers from Pierre Boulez not long before the influential composer’s death in 2016. 

Attahir’s instrumental music is highly textural and harmonically intriguing; taking inspiration from Eastern, Middle Eastern and Western cultures, he traces long-breathed phrases and motives that seem to expand beyond the edges of any identifiable form. After listening to significant pieces, like his 2020 violin concerto Layal or his 2017 string quartet Al Asr, you are left with the aftereffects of a visceral impact that is produced by a surreal palette of sound.  

Attahir said he prefers not to give too much away about his process or inspirations for his new Seattle Symphony co-commission, Hanoï Songs, a concerto for piano and harp that has its world premiere in this program. “I do prefer to be allusive and let people’s imaginations work from a more poetic statement.” His words in French with the English translation below: 

C’est l’heure des ressouvenirs, c’est l’heure des tristesses. 
Tout tourne autour de moi et dans le théâtre vacille le Fleuve d’argent. 
Les étoiles parsèment les voiles comme le mystère notre vie errante. 
Souffle suspendu dans la lumière, le cortège des ombres s’éloigne ! 
— Nous vivons des ténèbres avant de jouir de la clarté. 
Dans l’oubli, les âmes se rappellent — 
Il y aura toujours une histoire. Un poème. Une chanson d’antan. 
— Dans le paysage ancien et fugitif, la braise et la rosée se mêlent. 
 
Tout est calme à jamais.  
Doucement les vagues ont noyé la fureur 
Et porté l’éclat du soleil au pays retrouvé.  
Dans l’écume irisée, 
c’est le silence. 

It is the hour of memories, it is the hour of sadness. 
Everything turns around me, and in the theater, the Silver River wavers. 
The stars dot the sails like the mystery of our wandering life. 
Breath suspended in the light, the procession of shadows moves away! 
— We live in darkness before enjoying the clarity. 
In oblivion, souls remember — 
There will always be a story. A poem. A song of yesteryear. 
— In the ancient and fleeting landscape, embers and dew mingle. 

All is calm forever. 
Gently the waves have drowned the fury 
And carried the brilliance of the sun to the rediscovered country. 
In the iridescent foam, 
it is silence. 

MAURICE RAVEL 
Introduction and Allegro  
BORN: March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France 
DIED: December 28, 1937, in Paris, France
WORK COMPOSED: 1905 
WORLD PREMIERE: February 22, 1907, presented by Le Cercle Musical chamber society at the Hôtel de la Société française de photographie in Paris. 

What to Listen For:  

• The stunning harp cadenza in the second half, which revisits the main themes of the piece and adds virtuosic flourishes.  

The stunning harp cadenza in the second half, which revisits the main themes of the piece and adds virtuosic flourishes.  

Among the masters of French Impressionism, Maurice Ravel stands out for his sensuous musical textures and imaginative orchestrations, even if he never called himself an Impressionist. There is a magical ring to the best of his music — from the majestic String Quartet (1903) to the sumptuous ballet Daphnis et Chloé (1912) to the beautiful Piano Concerto in G major (1929–1931). An intelligent sense of structure undergirds the subtle and refined way in which Ravel’s music flows through time. “Even in its lushest moments, his music is never unstructured, brain and heart working closely together,” wrote the musicologist Roger Nichols.  

Introduction and Allegro is a stellar chamber piece, essentially a compact harp concerto, that fits Nichols’ observation. It is scored for flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet. (The version performed tonight has an expanded string section that includes double basses.) Ravel composed the piece in the summer of 1905 in a mad dash to fulfill a commission in time to leave on an international boating trip with friends. The commission had come from the Paris-based harp manufacturer Érard as a showpiece for its double-action harps. Two years prior, Érard’s competitor, Pleyel, had commissioned a piece from Debussy for the same purpose, though the chromatic Pleyel harps had 12 strings per octave, rather than the eight of Érard’s, whose pitches the harpist could adjust by using pedals. 

Cast in the key of G-flat major, the 11-minute piece opens with a tonally ambiguous motif from the flute and clarinet that is followed by a resplendent harp glissando. Themes of contrasting character are then introduced, with the harp initially only embellishing each, until the solo instrument becomes the central point when the tempo speeds up. Throughout, the harp keeps a harmonic and melodic conversation with the other players. The way in which Ravel develops the themes and gradually elevates the role of the harp — and its interplay with the flute, clarinet and strings in such a compact piece — is mesmerizing.  

The harp cadenza is a glowing show-off exhibit for the soloist, who reprises and reinvents the main themes by adding harmonics, glissandos and other virtuosic touches, before concluding this stellar chamber work that is, to Nichols’ above point, as nourishing to the ear as it is to the mind. 

MAURICE RAVEL 
Ma mère l'Oye (“Mother Goose”) 
WORK COMPOSED: 1908–1911 
WORLD PREMIERE: First premiered on April 20, 1910, as a piano duet. In 1911, Ravel orchestrated the five-piece suite and expanded it into a ballet, which premiered January 29, 1912, at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris. 

What to Listen For:  

• Ravel’s wonderful orchestral evocations of the characters and moods of the fairy tales that inspired the piece. For example: Beauty and the Beast, the crumb-stealing birds in the Tom Thumb scene, or the sensual awakening of Sleeping Beauty. 

Ravel’s wonderful orchestral evocations of the characters and moods of the fairy tales that inspired the piece. For example: Beauty and the Beast, the crumb-stealing birds in the Tom Thumb scene, or the sensual awakening of Sleeping Beauty. 

Ravel’s supremely evocative music reached a high point of expression in the lush Ma mère l'Oye, which conjures the dreamworld of children’s fantasies, echoing the composer’s own fondness for children and fairy tales. 

The piece started as a set of piano duets, or piano-four-hands, for Mimi and Jean Godebski, whose parents Ida and Cyprian were friends of Ravel’s. The composer would visit the Godebskis at their country house and relish telling stories to the children, including Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas and Beauty and the Beast, which would inspire parts of his Ma mère l'Oye. 

The main source for this program piece was Charles Perrault’s collection Tales of Mother Goose (1695), which includes Sleeping Beauty and Tom Thumb, while Laideronnette came from fairy tales by the Comtesse d’Aulnoy (1650–1705), and Conversations of Beauty and the Beast from the novelist Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711–1780).  

Ravel orchestrated the piece in 1911 and expanded it for a ballet the following year, changing the sequence of the scenes and adding a prelude, an opening scene and short connecting sections. The composer whimsically blends the folk stories and vividly depicts the characters through sparkling orchestration that calls for double winds, two horns, harp, celesta, strings and extended percussion. This Seattle Symphony program concludes with the complete version of Ma mère l’Oye. 

With two flutes and bassoon, and a distant-sounding muted horn, the Prélude evokes the surreal mood that fuels the source folk tales. There are suggestive flourishes from the harp that underscore the dreamlike setting, soon giving way to the Spinning-Wheel Dance and Scene, and to the sublime Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty, in which Ravel depicts a forest scene with flutes, clarinet and violins. Note the resemblances to the scenes from Pelléas. 

A brusque cry from a piccolo introduces the Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, set in a dainty triple time with warm woodwinds representing Beauty and a knobby contrabassoon the Beast. The mood darkens to underscore the snarls from the Beast, but the mythical couple ultimately reconcile when she reveals to him that his suppressed kindness is the key to transforming him into the prince he once was. 

In Tom Thumb, Tom has left a trail of breadcrumbs in the forest to trace his way back home, but he turns to discover that the birds have eaten them all. A solo oboe, and later an English horn, delivers the undulating main theme. Ravel then creates a beguiling effect — an upward-sliding violin with harmonics — to which a flute adds twittering trills, representing the birds. 

The mood shifts for Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas, who has been cursed with eternal ugliness. Colorful gestures from harp, celesta, glockenspiel, piccolo and flute create a picturesque world of sound based on the pentatonic scale — think of the five black keys of a piano — and almost creates a pastiche of music from the Far East, especially with the gong splashes. Toward the end, the opening fanfare reappears more loudly, and the Sleeping Beauty motif is revisited, this time on the violin.  

The gorgeously orchestrated concluding scene, The Enchanted Garden, illustrates the euphoric  awakening of Sleeping Beauty with a kiss from Prince Charming. As the scene unfolds, Ravel treats us to alluring combinations of celesta, harp and violin. In the last few minutes, the different orchestral groups coalesce and intensify toward a final outpouring that represents the moment of the awakening. It is a blissful orchestral climax. So sensual — with timpani pulsations releasing pent-up energy in waves — that you can almost feel it. 

Esteban Meneses © 2024    

Esteban Meneses is a fellow of the 2022 Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, a freelance arts and music journalist, and a bilingual public relations consultant. Read his articles at muckrack.com/estebanmeneses.