A LETTER IN THE WIND IN BENUMBED WEATHER
to run, to break my fetters
to smash the death
that seized me so
to make my way to you
my princess, my princess
I was still looking in the distance
I still believed that all
belongs to me
I was still swelling out my breast
happy to meet you
happy to touch you
when I heard already
my horses neighing
in nether world
I was still preparing myself to welcome you
I was still waving hung by the old mirror
when I was told that you had left
to make my way, now, near you
now, when you left, to hold and embrace you!
death chained me up so well
that I’m ashamed of crying even
my princess, my princess.
Pavane for a Dead Princess -- Anthony Pierson
Maurice Ravel was a 24-year-old student at the Conservatoire de Paris (though he had already been expelled once, in 1895, and would be again in 1903) when he wrote “Pavane pour une infante défunte” (Pavane for a Dead Princess) as a piano solo in 1899. “Pavan” was a dialectical form of the modern Italian adjective "padovano" (from Padua), but as a slow processional dance that was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries its name was probably derived from the Spanish “pavón” (peacock); as part of the dance, a lone gentleman advanced and went “en se pavanant” (strutting like a peacock) to salute the lady opposite him. Although he spent nearly his entire life in Paris, Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, 18 km (11 mi) from the Spanish border, and his Basque mother’s heritage was a large influence on much of his music. Though the piece was commissioned by the sewing machine heiress Winnaretta Singer (Princesse Edmond de Polignac) it did not refer to any particular princess but was, rather, as the composer described it, "an evocation of a pavane that a little princess [infanta] might, in former times, have danced at the Spanish court;" on another occasion he insisted that the “title has nothing to do with the composition. I simply liked the sound of those words and I put them there.”
ReplyDeleteSoon afterwards Ravel joined an informal group of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians; his lifelong friend pianist Ricardo Viñes called them Les Apaches ("The Hooligans") to describe their status as "artistic outcasts.” Nevertheless, Ravel assiduously sought to win the Prix de Rome, France’s most prestigious prize for young composers; in 1900 he was eliminated in the first round, in 1901 he won 2nd prize, competed again without success in 1902 and 1903, and was again eliminated in the first round in 1905; as it turned out, only former students of a senior Conservatoire professor progressed beyond round one, which led to a scandal in which the French government forced Ravel’s old adversary there to retire early in favor of Ravel’s supportive instructor Gabriel Fauré, with instructions to make radical changes. Meanwhile, in 1902 Viñes performed “Pavane pour une infante défunte” for the first time in public and it subsequently became quite popular. Though Ravel intended it to be played very slowly, he told one performer of the piece that it was called "Pavane for a dead princess," not "dead pavane for a princess." Indifferent to money, he rarely took on students, though Ralph Vaughn Williams studied under him for 3 months in the winter of 1907-1908; in the 1920s he refused to give lessons to George Gershwin, claiming that doing so "would probably cause him to write bad Ravel and lose his great gift of melody and spontaneity." In 1909 Vaughn Williams arranged for him to play at the Société des Concerts Français in London, his first concert outside France. Fauré also presided over the Société Musicale Indépendente organized by Ravel and other former students; its first concert was in 1910 and premiered works by Fauré himself, Ravel, Zoltán Kodály, and Claude Debussy, which Ravel performed, though by that time the two composers had broken off their personal friendship. Meanwhile, Ravel had begun to rearrange his piano works into fully orchestrated versions, publishing the “Pavane” in that format in 1910 scored for two flutes, oboe, two clarinets (in B-flat), two bassoons, two horns, harp, and strings; Sir Henry Wood premiered it in Manchester, England, the following year. He was one of the first composers to recognize the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public; despite his relatively limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he recorded or supervised recordings of several of his works. The first gramophone recording of the “Pavane” was made in 1921 in Paris, but Ravel’s own recording (conducted by Pedro de Freitas-Branco) was not done until 1932, although the composer had made a piano roll recording in 1922. In 1932 he suffered a head injury in a taxi accident, which exacerbated existing conditions that he had acquired as a lorry driver in World War I (including insomnia and digestive problems, amoebic dysentery, and frostbite). Before the accident he had begun to score Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film “Don Quixote,” but he only completed three pieces, which were his final compositions. Though he retained his auditory imagery and could still “hear” music in his head, he was no longer able to compose or perform. In 1937 Clovis Vincent performed surgery on him to halt his further deterioration, but he lapsed into a coma and died at 62.
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