Le Tombeau de Couperin

Program Note:

In the early 1900s, Debussy spent a great deal of time with Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). Debussy was twelve years older than Ravel and helped fulfill a mentor’s role for the younger composer. Debussy had attained several honors of which Ravel had only dreamed, including the prestigious Prix de Rome. They would drift apart later as a result of personality differences and the public’s desire to see them as competing faces of new French music. However, the extent of Debussy’s influence cannot be overstated.
Ravel’s early works, written prior to WWI, were experimental and extremely colorful. He was also a master pianist. Most of his compositions developed from thoughts worked out directly at the keys and require a virtuoso’s command of the instrument. Such is the case with Le Tombeau de Couperin composed for solo piano from 1914-17. It would originally contain six movements, ranging from spirited technical material (Prélude and Toccata), strict counterpoint (Fugue), to several Baroque dances (Forlane, Minuet, and Rigaudon). The writing moves from sparkling to withdrawn, and the whole is one of Ravel’s most substantial and accomplished piano works. However, he was also a brilliant orchestrator—as he would show in his famous treatment of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1922). So in 1919 Ravel selected four movements of the Tombeau to set for orchestra; he omitted the Fugue and closing Toccata from the orchestral version while keeping the core dance movements. It is the orchestral version that we will hear this evening.
Ravel’s Tombeau is a double memorial. He began the piece shortly after WWI had erupted; the six movements became tributes to six friends who died in battle. Moreover, Ravel pays tribute to the Baroque dance suite and forms that inspired François Couperin centuries earlier. No one would mistake Ravel’s piece for an actual Baroque dance suite, though at least the intent was there. It joins with works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, Satie, and others that escaped political and social upheavals of the time by seeking a neo-classical sound.

(c) Jason Stell