Gaspard de la nuit

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Gaspard de la nuit: Trois poèmes pour piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand is a three-part piano work by Maurice Ravel from 1908 , which was inspired by Aloysius Bertrand 's short prose poem of the same name from 1842.

Gaspard de la nuit is considered Ravel's most important work. He described the work himself with the words: "Gaspard de la nuit, pieces for piano after Aloysius Bertrand, are three romantic poems of transcendental virtuosity."

The "Piano Triptych" was premiered on January 9, 1909 by Ricardo Viñes in Paris .

introduction

Ravel's well-read friend Ricardo Viñes introduced the composer to the volume of poems Gaspard de la Nuit by Aloysius Bertrand . The wording of the title is also important for Ravel's music. “Gaspard, a male given name, is of Persian origin, where the word actually means a man who is responsible for the royal treasures. Gaspard of the Night or Treasurer of the Night alludes to someone who is responsible for everything related to jewels, which is dark, mysterious, maybe even grouchy. ”“ Gaspard de la Nuit ”is an old French expression for the devil .

The subtitle of the volume of poetry Fantaisies á la manière de Rembrandt et de Callo suggests that both the calming and the creepy aspects of the night are evoked by both Bertrand and Ravel. Rembrandt's fascination with subtle shadows and darkness is well known. The mention of Callot establishes a direct connection to ETA Hoffmann , the German composer and poet of the fantastic, who published the fantasy pieces in Callot's manner in 1814/1815 , including the fairy tale The Golden Pot .

In a letter of July 17, 1908 to his girlfriend Ida Godebska about his three months of intensive work on the three poems from Bertrand's collection, Ravel wrote that he felt inspired by the devil: “... no wonder, since he (the devil) is the real one The author of these poems is “.

shape

Excerpt from the third movement (“Scarbo”) on a house wall in Minneapolis

The sentence names are:

  1. Ondine (The water mermaid, approx. 6–7 min)
  2. Le gibet (The gallows, approx. 6–7 min)
  3. Scarbo (the cunning goblin, approx. 9-10 min)

The literary template is also in three parts. Ondine is about a mermaid or mermaid in her realm, in Le gibet one looks at a hanged man on the gallows at dusk. Scarbo deals with a demon or goblin who disturbs people in their sleep. With the extremely virtuoso final movement, Ravel intended to surpass Mili Balakirev's Islamej in terms of technical difficulty and thus to create the most difficult solo piece for piano ever.

style

In terms of time and roughly stylistically, the composition can be classified as belonging to the Impressionist era . As is typical in Impressionist music , the pieces Gaspard de la nuit do not have a fixed key or a leading note, but due to the dominance of minor chords and arpeggios as well as dissonant intervals, they appear dark and diffuse, sometimes melancholy.

Ondine begins with a quick succession of high notes and develops the main motif from this, which reappears in a strongly modified form in the middle and at the end of the piece. The climax of the piece is a sequence of chords that increase in volume, which is continued in arpeggios of minor triads.

Ondine. Pianist: Andreij Makarewitsch

Le Gibet is a slow, calm piece, it contains a total of 153 b's, which represents a bell sound and which ignores changes in tempo and dynamics until the end.

Le Gibet. (MIDI recording)

Scarbo is a piece that seems to have been broken up by frequent upheavals and is considered to be one of the most difficult piano pieces to learn. Often bitonal and polytonal harmonies are used. Ravel later said to Scarbo, "I wanted to do a cartoon on romance ."

Scarbo. Pianist: Andreij Makarewitsch

Orchestral versions

Eugène Aynsley Goossens orchestrated Gaspard in 1942, Marius Constant orchestrated the piece in 1988.

literature

  • Norma Doris Pohl: Gaspard de la Nuit by Maurice Ravel: A Theoretical and Performance Analysis. Washington University , St. Louis 1978. (English)
  • Siglind Bruhn: Images and ideas in modern French piano music: The extra-musical subtext in piano works by Ravel, Debussy, and Messiaen . Pendragon Press, Stuyvesant NY 1997, ISBN 0-945193-95-5 (xxxiii, 425, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Aloysius Bertrand: Gaspard de la Nuit: Fantasies in the manner of Rembrandt and Callot . 1st edition. Reinecke & Voß, Leipzig 2013, ISBN 978-3-9813470-9-8 (144 pages).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gaspard de la nuit by Aloysius Bertrand Original text for the Gutenberg project
  2. ↑ Alexander Eccles: Gaspard de la nuit: Horror and Elegance. Stanford University , 2004, accessed November 9, 2015 .
  3. ^ Matthias Kornemann: Gaspard de la nuit. Rondo , accessed November 7, 2015 .
  4. ^ A b Ravel, Maurice: Gaspard de la nuit. Trois poèmes d'après Aloysius Bertrand. SWR2 , June 21, 2010, accessed April 10, 2014 .
  5. ^ Siglind Bruhn: Images and ideas in modern French piano music , pp. Xxviii
  6. ^ Siglind Bruhn: Images and ideas in modern French piano music , pp. Xxix
  7. ^ Charles Rosen : The Brilliant Music of Ravel. The New York Review of Books , November 10, 2011, accessed April 10, 2014 .
  8. ^ Piano & Keyboard: The Bimonthly Piano Quarterly. Vol. 184-189. p. 62. String Letter Press, 1997. "The entire Gaspard de la Nuit was not intended as a 'caricature of romanticism'. That statement of Ravel to Vlado Perlemuter only referred to 'Scarbo'."
  9. ^ Maurice Ravel (Eugene Goossens) - Gaspard de la Nuit. June 29, 2011, accessed May 11, 2020 .

Web links