''Trois poèmes de Mallarmé'' is a sequence of three art songs by
Maurice 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 ...
, based on poems by
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...
for
soprano
A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...
, two
flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
s, two
clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound.
Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
s, piano, and
string quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...
. Composed in 1913, it was premiered on 14 January 1914, performed by Rose Féart and conducted by D.-E. Inghelbrecht, at the inaugural concert of the
société musicale indépendante The French société musicale indépendante (SMI) was founded in 1910 in particular by Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Charles Koechlin and Florent Schmitt.
When the SMI was founded, the Société nationale de musique was the main Parisian compan ...
of the 1913–1914 season in the
Salle Érard Salle Érard
The salle Érard is a music venue located in Paris, 13 rue du Mail in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris.
It is part of the hôtel particulier which belonged, from the 18th century, to the family of piano, harp and harpsichord manufact ...
in Paris.
The work bears the reference M. 64, in the catalogue of works of the composer established by
musicologist
Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...
Marcel Marnat
Marcel Marnat (born 6 July 1933) is a French musicologist, journalist and radio producer.
Biography
After a scientific training, he collaborated in the writing of various cultural newspapers and magazines (''Combat'', ''Jazz Hot'', ''Arts'', ...
.
History
Maurice Ravel had a predilection for the poetry of Mallarmé. In an interview with the
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
in the late 1920s, he said:
In 1913, the first complete edition of Mallarmé's poems was published. Ravel set three of his poems the same year, in different cities that refer to main places in his life with family and friends: ''Placet futile'' was completed in Paris, ''Surgi'' in
, where his parents lived, and ''Soupir'' in Clarens, Switzerland, where he was able to meet again with
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 20th-century clas ...
.
The dates of composition follow the order of execution of the three poems: the manuscript of ''Soupir'' was completed on 2 April 1913, ''Placet futile'' in May, and ''Surgi...'' in August.
A "Debussy-Ravel" match
Thanks to
Henri Mondor
Henri Mondor (20 May 1885, Saint-Cernin, Cantal – 6 April 1962) was a French physician, surgeon, professor of clinical surgery, writer and historian of French literature and medicine.
Mondor was a professor of clinical surgery in Paris and bec ...
, who was one of his friends, Ravel had been able to obtain the rights for the musicalization of Mallarmé's poems. He confided him his "relief" in the face of this request, as
Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
also urged him to grant him these same rights. According to Marcel Marnat, Ravel then invited Mondor to yield to this request.
Since the ''
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' ( L. 86), known in English as ''Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun'', is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration. It was composed in 1894 and first performed ...
'', the ''
Mercure de France
The was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group.
The gazette was published f ...
'' used to present Debussy as "aspiring to Mallarmé's legacy". Learning that the rights had already been granted to a composer who was readily presented as his rival, he was furious.
Debussy confided how "this Mallarmé-Ravel story isn't funny." For his part, Ravel announced to
Roland-Manuel
Alexis Roland-Manuel (22 March 18911 November 1966) was a French people, French composer and critic, remembered mainly for his criticism.
Biography
He was born Roland Alexis Manuel Lévy in Paris, to a family of Belgians, Belgian and Jewish ori ...
: "We will soon see a Debussy-Ravel match"..."In 1913, Debussy and Ravel didn't talk to each other", concluded Stravinsky, quite interested in such "scrambles" between composers.
In general, the two great composers - apart from a certain tacit rivalry inherent in their creative contemporaneity - had always respected each other deeply, and many supposed frictions between the two personalities were above all caused by their respective surroundings, or even by the coteries occupying the Parisian musical scene.
Introduction
In the eyes of the critics, the choice of poems was not fortuitous: Debussy and Ravel set ''Soupir'' and ''Placet futile'' to music. The comparison of the differences between the two versions of these poems has sometimes resulted in unfortunate consequences for the critics regarding their styles.
Debussy had chosen ''Éventail'' from the poem ''Autre éventail'' (by Miss Mallarmé) to finish his collection on an equally dreamy note, like a refined madrigal, subtly erotic. Ravel, for "the love of difficulty", chose to put in music one of the most hermetic sonnets of Mallarmé.
The "Trois Poèmes" are as follows :
# ''Soupir'' — dedicated 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 ...
# ''Placet futile'' — dedicated to
Florent Schmitt
Florent Schmitt (; 28 September 187017 August 1958) was a French composer. He was part of the group known as Les Apaches. His most famous pieces are ''La tragédie de Salome'' and ''Psaume XLVII'' (Psalm 47). He has been described as "one of th ...
# ''Surgi de la croupe et du bond'' — dedicated to
Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...
The performance takes about twelve minutes.
Premiere
The premiere took place on 14 January 1914, during a concert where were presented in first audition ''
Le Petit Elfe Ferme-l'œil ''Le Petit Elfe Ferme-l'œil'' (Op. 73) is an orchestral suite by Florent Schmitt adapted from his music for the homonymous ballet ("divertissement chorégraphique") after a tale by Hans Christian Andersen.Quatre poèmes hindous'' by
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 ...
and the ' by Igor Stravinsky. Ravel's poems ended this concert.
Influences and coincidences
The instrumentation is the same as for the ''Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise'' by Stravinsky, and close to that of the ''Poèmes hindous'' by Delage. The influence of ''
Pierrot Lunaire
''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a me ...
'' by Arnold Schoenberg is often mentioned: Stravinsky and
Edgar Varese
Edgar is a commonly used English given name, from an Anglo-Saxon name ''Eadgar'' (composed of '' ead'' "rich, prosperous" and ''gar'' "spear").
Like most Anglo-Saxon names, it fell out of use by the later medieval period; it was, however, rev ...
had witnessed the creation of this work in Berlin in 1912. Ravel, without having heard it, had gathered their testimonies and, on their enthusiastic description, would have considered writing for a
chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...
ensemble
Ensemble may refer to:
Art
* Architectural ensemble
* ''Ensemble'' (album), Kendji Girac 2015 album
* Ensemble (band), a project of Olivier Alary
* Ensemble cast (drama, comedy)
* Ensemble (musical theatre), also known as the chorus
* ''En ...
.
Paul Collaer
Paul Collaer (Boom, 8 June 1891 - Brussels, 10 December 1989) was a Belgian musicologist, pianist, and conductor of Flemish background. Through concerts and radio broadcastings, he played an important role in the popularization of 20th century musi ...
stated that "Schoenberg pointed the way for music to escape from the enormous apparatus of the great orchestra".
However,
Alexis Roland-Manuel
Alexis Roland-Manuel (22 March 18911 November 1966) was a French composer and critic, remembered mainly for his criticism.
Biography
He was born Roland Alexis Manuel Lévy in Paris, to a family of Belgian and Jewish origins. He studied composi ...
would note that
Émile Vuillermoz Émile-Jean-Joseph Vuillermoz (23 May 1878 – 2 March 1960) was a French critic in the areas of music, film, drama and literature. He was also a composer, but abandoned this for criticism.
Early life
Émile Vuillermoz was born in Lyon in 1878. He ...
would also recall that
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers ...
had arranged ''
La bonne chanson
La Bonne Chanson is a Canadian publishing and independent record label that is "dedicated to the dissemination of French and French-Canadian songs of quality". It was founded in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada
Canada is a country in ...
'' with string quartet, and that the ''
Chanson perpétuelle
The "Chanson perpétuelle", opus number, Op. 37 is a mélodie by Ernest Chausson, written in December 1898 in music, 1898. It is one of the major voice, vocal-orchestral works of Chausson, along with the ''Poème de l'amour et de la mer''. Besid ...
'', Op. 37 by Ernest Chausson (1898) was written for soprano, piano and string quartet.
Overview of the work
The ''Trois poèmes'' are remarkably brief: 37 bars for ''Soupir'', 28 bars for ''Placet futile'' and only 24 for ''Surgi…''
''Soupir'' opens with the "fairy-like" sonority of the natural harmonics of the string quartet, in a continuous stream of quadruple eighth notes. The voice enters quietly after this introduction. As it gently rises, the piano, then the flutes, and finally the clarinets appear. The quartet resumes after a pause, offering a natural, more elegant sound. Until the end, the voice is supported by soft sonorities on the piano, written on three staves, and discreet backings from the other instruments. The artificial harmonics of the strings return briefly in alternation with a delicate chordal arpeggio in the piano to conclude the movement.
''Placet futile'' offers rhythm games and "dialogues" of more whimsical sonorities: the measure often changes, when ''Soupir'' remained immutably four-stroke. The piano, absent during the whole first quatrain of the poem, makes an entrance almost as "spectacular" as in the future ''
Tzigane
''Tzigane'' is a rhapsodic composition by the French composer Maurice Ravel. It was commissioned by and dedicated to Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Arányi, great-niece of the influential violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim. The original instrumentati ...
'' of 1924: a rush of arpeggios accompanying the evocation of frivolous pleasures and the "lukewarm games" of the poem. The flute offers a counter-singing to the last verses of the sonnet, which prefigures the "princess's air" of ''
l'Enfant et les Sortilèges
''L'enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties'' (''The Child and the Spells: A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts'') is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette. It is Ravel's second opera, his first be ...
''.
''Surgi…'' offers as first characteristic a change in
instrumentation
Instrumentation a collective term for measuring instruments that are used for indicating, measuring and recording physical quantities. The term has its origins in the art and science of scientific instrument-making.
Instrumentation can refer to ...
: the second flute takes the
piccolo
The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...
, and the second
clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound.
Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...
takes the
bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...
. The small flute immediately flies away, on a tremolo broken from the violins, but cruelly dissonant. Overall, the accompaniment is very discreet, with a clear and icy equality of tone (
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'', the ...
of the quartet,
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 of the piano, etc.), somewhat frightening, in accord with the words "funeral" of the poem - until the end "exhaling" in the extreme bass of the voice.
Vocally, the melody follows the text as closely as possible: neither vocals nor
melisma
Melisma ( grc-gre, μέλισμα, , ; from grc, , melos, song, melody, label=none, plural: ''melismata'') is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referr ...
, one note per syllable. The expansion linked to instrumental accompaniment, however, imposes a certain lyrical "breath". The performance of the song and its sharpness, or "intelligibility", are essential.
Critic
It is on this point that
Charles Koechlin
Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin (; 27 November 186731 December 1950), commonly known as Charles Koechlin, was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things ...
makes a reservation about Ravel's poems, in his ': "Avoid also words that are rare and difficult to understand at first audition".
The first
tercet
A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.
Examples of tercet forms
English-language haiku is an example of an unrhymed tercet poem. A poetic triplet is a tercet in which all three lines follow the same ...
of ''Surgi de la croupe et du bond'':
;''Le pur vase d’aucun breuvage''
;''Que l’inexhaustible veuvage''
;''Agonise mais ne consent''
appears to be the most difficult, from this point of view. Koechlin, who was aware of this, adds in a note:
The apostrophe "Princess! ", a descendant one by Debussy, is rising by Ravel, over the same interval of a sixth. In ''Surgi'', the vocal line presents unaccompanied
tritone
In music theory, the tritone is defined as a musical interval composed of three adjacent whole tones (six semitones). For instance, the interval from F up to the B above it (in short, F–B) is a tritone as it can be decomposed into the three a ...
. In this melody, the last composition, already announces the future Ravel, that of the ''
Chansons madécasses
' (''Madagascan Songs'') is a set of three exotic art songs by Maurice Ravel written in 1925 and 1926 to words from the poetry collection of the same name by Évariste de Parny.
Structure
Scored for mezzo-soprano or baritone, flute, cello ...
''...
In'' Placet futile'' suddenly two equally remarkable "faces" of Ravel are set against each other. After the virtuoso, dazzling and vertiginous entry of the piano (figure 3 of the score), the voice is simply expressed.
;''Et que sur moi je sais ton regard clos tombé''
under a rare unison of the entire quartet, and major, very discreet chords () of the piano. Such is Maurice Ravel: the engineer of so many precision mechanics and passionate lyricist.
Vladimir Jankélévitch
Vladimir Jankélévitch (; 31 August 1903 – 6 June 1985) was a French philosopher and musicologist.
Biography
Jankélévitch was the son of Russian Jewish parents, who had emigrated to France.
In 1922 he started studying philosophy at the Éco ...
finds there "a precious melody, baroque and rather Góngoresque, which curves the vocal line and imposes great variations, preventing it from shaking. The pianistic ornament, where the cold seventh major movement - the one noted next to it - stands out, is as rich as it is clear."
Legacy
The ''Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé'' by Christophe Looten (1997) are written for the same instrumental ensemble as those of Maurice Ravel.