Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio for

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

, and

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

is a chamber work composed in 1914. Dedicated to Ravel's

counterpoint In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

teacher André Gedalge, the trio was first performed in Paris in January 1915, by

Alfredo Casella Alfredo Casella (25 July 18835 March 1947) was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor. Life and career Casella was born in Turin, the son of Maria (née Bordino) and Carlo Casella. His family included many musicians: his grandfather, a fr ...

(piano), Gabriel Willaume (violin), and Louis Feuillard (cello). A typical performance of the work lasts about 30 minutes.

Composition

Ravel had been planning to write a trio for at least six years before beginning work in earnest in March 1914. At the outset, Ravel remarked to his pupil

Maurice Delage Maurice Charles Delage (13 November 1879 – 19 or 21 September 1961) was a French composer and pianist. Biography Delage was born and died in Paris. He first worked as a clerk for a maritime agency in Paris, and later as a fishmonger in Boul ...

, "I’ve written my trio. Now all I need are the themes." During the summer of 1914, Ravel did his compositional work in the French Basque commune of

Saint-Jean-de-Luz Saint-Jean-de-Luz (; eu, Donibane Lohitzune,Donibane Lohitzune
Ciboure Ciboure (; ,ZIBURU

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

, and he felt a deep identification with his Basque heritage. During the Trio's composition, Ravel was also working on a piano

concerto A concerto (; plural ''concertos'', or ''concerti'' from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The typi ...

based on Basque themes entitled ''Zazpiak Bat'' (

for "The Seven are One"). Although eventually abandoned, this project left its mark on the Trio, particularly in the opening movement, which Ravel later noted was "Basque in colouring." However, Ravel's first biographer and friend Roland-Manuel had a different account of the theme's origin:

Our great musicians have never been ashamed of admiring a pretty tune from a ''café concert''. It is said that it was in watching ice-cream vendors dancing a fandango at Saint-Jean-de-Luz that Ravel picked up the first theme of his Trio in A, a theme which he believed to be Basque, but wasn't.

While initial progress on the Trio was slow, the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

in August 1914 spurred on Ravel to finish the work so that he could enlist in the army. A few days after France’s entry into the war, Ravel wrote again to Maurice Delage: "Yes, I am working on the Trio with the sureness and lucidity of a madman." By September he had finished it, writing to

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...

, "The idea that I should be leaving at once made me get through five months' work in five weeks! My Trio is finished." In October, he was accepted as a nurse's aide by the Army, and in March 1916 he became a volunteer truck driver for the 13th Artillery Regiment.

Musical overview

In composing the Trio, Ravel was aware of the compositional difficulties posed by the genre: how to reconcile the contrasting sonorities of the piano and the string instruments, and how to achieve balance between the three instrumental voices – in particular, how to make that of the cello stand out from the others, which are more easily heard. In tackling the former problem, Ravel adopted an

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

l approach to his writing: by making extensive use of the extreme ranges of each instrument, he created a texture of sound unusually rich for a chamber work. He employed coloristic effects such as trills,

tremolo In music, ''tremolo'' (), or ''tremolando'' (), is a trembling effect. There are two types of tremolo. The first is a rapid reiteration: * Of a single Musical note, note, particularly used on String instrument#Bowing, bowed string instrument ...

harmonics A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the '' fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', ...

glissando In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the co ...

s, and arpeggios, thus demanding a high level of technical proficiency from all three musicians. Meanwhile, to achieve clarity in texture and to secure instrumental balance, Ravel frequently spaced the violin and cello lines two

octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...

s apart, with the right hand of the piano playing between them. Inspiration for the musical content of the Trio came from a wide variety of sources, from Basque dance to Malaysian poetry. However, Ravel did not deviate from his usual predilection for traditional musical forms. The Trio follows the standard format for a four-movement classical work, with the outer movements in

sonata form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...

flanking a scherzo and trio and a slow movement. Nevertheless, Ravel manages to introduce his own innovations within this conventional framework.

Movements

The Trio is written in the key of

A minor A minor is a minor scale based on A, with the pitches A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Its key signature has no flats and no sharps. Its relative major is C major and its parallel major is A major. The A natural minor scale is: : Changes ...

and consists of four movements:

I. Modéré

According to Ravel, the first movement draws on the

zortziko The zortziko is a dance rhythm that originates in the Basque Country. It is also used as an accompaniment rhythm for vocal melodies, such as "Gernikako arbola", the unofficial anthem of the Basques, composed in 1853 by José María Iparraguirre ...

, a Basque dance form. The movement is notated in time, each bar being subdivided into a rhythmic pattern. The influence of ''Zazpiak Bat'' is most obvious in the opening theme, whose rhythm is identical to that of the ''Zazpiak Bat'' main theme but with halved note values. Also notable is the melody's stepwise movement before followed by a leap of a fourth; the opening themes of the other three movements are similarly constructed—in the second and fourth movements, the jump is of a fifth. Ravel employs

in this movement but not without introducing his own touches. The second

theme Theme or themes may refer to: * Theme (arts), the unifying subject or idea of the type of visual work * Theme (Byzantine district), an administrative district in the Byzantine Empire governed by a Strategos * Theme (computing), a custom graphical ...

is presented in the tonic A minor, and reappears untransposed in the recapitulation but with different harmonies. To avoid overuse of the tonic key, Ravel ends the movement in the

relative key In music, relative keys are the major and minor scales that have the same key signatures ( enharmonically equivalent), meaning that they share all the same notes but are arranged in a different order of whole steps and half steps. A pair of major ...

of C major. In the recapitulation, the appearance of the main theme in the piano is superimposed over a rhythmically modified version of the second theme in the strings. This juxtaposition of themes was a favourite device of Ravel's, who used it in other works as well, such as the '' Menuet antique'' and the Menuet in ''

Le Tombeau de Couperin ''Le Tombeau de Couperin'' (''The Couperin's Grave'') is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917. The piece is in six movements, based on those of a traditional Baroque suite. Each movement is dedicated to the mem ...

''.

II. Pantoum: Assez vif

This movement is based on a traditional scherzo and trio A-B-A form. The scherzo presents two themes: the piano opens with the spiky first theme in A minor, while the strings respond in double octaves with the smoother second theme in F minor. The name of the movement refers to a Malaysian verse form, in which the second and fourth lines of each four-line stanza become the first and third lines of the next. While Ravel never commented on the significance of the movement's title, Brian Newbould has suggested that the poetic form is reflected in the way these two themes are developed in alternation. The F-major melody of the trio is in a completely different metre () from the scherzo (). When the piano introduces it, the strings continue to play material derived from the scherzo in time, and the two time signatures continue to coexist in the different parts until the return of the trio.

III. Passacaille: Très large

The third movement is a

passacaglia The passacaglia (; ) is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used today by composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often based on a bass- ostinato and written in triple metre. Origin The t ...

based on the piano's opening eight-bar bass line, which is derived from the first theme of the ''Pantoum''. The cello joins next, followed by the violin. While the melody is passed between the three instruments, the movement builds singlemindedly to a powerful climax, then dies away.

IV. Final: Animé

Against a backdrop of violin arpeggio

(previously used by Ravel in his '' Trois poèmes de Mallarmé'') and double-stopped trills from the cello, the piano presents the five-bar first theme. As in the first movement, irregular time signatures are again in use: the movement alternates between and time. The trumpet calls in the development section (played by the piano after rehearsal number 7) may be an allusion to the declaration of war in August 1914, which coincided with Ravel's work on this movement.Roger Nichols, notes to CDA3002

/ref> As the most orchestral of the four movements, the ''Final'' exploits the resources of the three players to the utmost, and Ravel rounds off the entire work with a brilliant Coda (music), coda.

Popular culture

* The first movement was used extensively as a

soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack o ...

in the 1992 film '' Un cœur en hiver'' (''A Heart in Winter''). The music credits in the film are given to Maurice Ravel. * An adapted version of the third movement features in the 2014 film ''Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)''. * In a 1993

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Proms The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...

concert, Yan-Pascal Tortelier premièred his orchestration of the trio with the

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra The BBC Philharmonic is a national British broadcasting symphony orchestra and is one of five radio orchestras maintained by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The Philharmonic is a department of the BBC North Group division based at Media ...

References

External links

*
Performance of Ravel's Piano Trio
by the

Claremont Trio Claremont Trio is a New York-based piano trio including Juilliard School alumnae Emily Bruskin (violin) and Julia Bruskin (cello), and Yale School of Music alumna Sophiko Simsive (piano). The group was founded at Juilliard in 1999, and made its p ...

from the

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was founded ...

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format
Analysis of Ravel's Trio
{{authority control Compositions by Maurice Ravel

Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...

1914 compositions Compositions in A minor Music dedicated to students or teachers