Ravel, Maurice

Ravel, Maurice – Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé for voice, 2 flutes, 2 clarinettes, string quartet & piano

I – Soupir. Lent p. 1
II – Placet futile. Très modéré p. 13
III – Surgi de la croupe et du bond. Lent p. 20

Preface

The relations between Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were not exactly relaxed,and when the two men happened to meet it was not always by intention. One truly odd
encounter occurred in 1913.

In March and April of that year Ravel was staying in the Swiss town of Clarens, where he joined forces with Stravinsky to re-orchestrate and arrange Mussorgsky’s unfinished opera Khovanshchina at the behest of Serge Diaghilev – and where Stravinsky showed him the manuscript of his recently completed ballet, Le Sacre du printemps. On 2 April 1913 Ravel, writing to the wife of his great Italian colleague Alfredo Casella, mentioned a bold plan to mount a “scandal concert” involving a narrator, a singer, a piano, a string quartet, two flutes, and two clarinets. The program was meant to include Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, Igor Stravinsky’s Poèmes de la lyrique japonaise, and Ravel’s two Mallarmé settings. …

Read preface / Vorwort > HERE