Maurice Ravel once said about his most famous work (Bolero) that it was "a piece for orchestra without music". Two things come to my mind about this comment: 1. He wrote the piece to learn and to teach about orchestration (see yesterday's post), and therefore the relative lack of musical material was intentional. 2. He had very high standards. Some of his works contain so much music that they are almost overwhelming - an example being the ballet entitled Daphnis et Chloe (1912), where the harmonic settings and melodic ideas are unbelievably complex, and yet not a note is out of place. It's an astonishing listen.
Today, though, I'd like to turn our attention to Le Tombeau de Couperin, a piano suite written as an elegy to friends who were killed during World War I. It is comprised of six short pieces, some based on dance forms (Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet), and others on compositional structures (Prelude, Fugue, Toccata). It is unique in that it is considered a masterpiece as a work for solo piano (it requires a very high degree of virtuosity), as well as for orchestra, because Ravel later orchestrated four of the pieces (he excluded the Fugue and Toccata, although they have been done by others since) and they too have entered into standard concert repertoire. Usually, if one wants to hear the most adventurous and/or experimental work of a composer, the pieces for smaller ensembles (or solo instruments) are the ticket - for two main reasons. One: composers are less willing to take chances when the livelihoods and reputations of many people are involved. Two: some sonorities that sound fine on a piano (or the like) do not come across as well when the multiple timbres of an orchestra are involved, unless the composer is also an orchestrator of the highest rank, as is the case here. So a rare listening opportunity presents itself with this work - to compare and contrast its two forms, and to try to learn what Ravel is telling us about the orchestra, and music, and art - and how they are inspired by both the living and the dead.