That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Or, as the French would have it, “Qui vivra verra.” He who lives shall see.
It’s healthy to be challenged sometimes, even if you’re a master like Maurice Ravel. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” for Ravel’s birthday, we’ll enjoy two of the composer’s harder-won works.
Beethoven once remarked, in regard to his string trios, that writing for three instruments is more difficult than writing for four, as in a string quartet. How much more difficult still it must have been for Ravel to compose his Sonata for Violin and Cello.
In 1920, Henri Prunière, editor of “La Revue musicale,” commissioned a number of prominent musicians to contribute works to the memory of Claude Debussy. Ravel’s participation amounted to a single movement for violin and cello. Later, during the summer of 1921, while on vacation in the Basque region (Ravel was of Basque descent), he decided to expand the piece into four movements. The portion dedicated to Debussy now serves as the work’s opener.
Ravel became totally immersed in the project, but the going was not at all easy. At one point, he complained, “This rascal of a duo makes me extremely ill.” By January of 1922, he was still grappling with the scherzo, which he finally tossed out and replaced, completing the work the following month.
In the end, he understood the significance of the piece in relation to his artistic development. Working from a limited palette of two stringed instruments had required him to focus on the essentials. Gone was the cushion of harmonic luxuriousness. The interplay of melody, rhythm, and counterpoint were of even greater importance.
These restrictions caused him to explore a leaner, more Classical sound, but the intensity of completing the assignment did not come without cost. So drained was he by the austere exercise that he produced only one other, minor work over the next two years.
As a younger composer, at the turn of the century, Ravel was eager to win the Prix de Rome. The prize, awarded to worthy young artists in several disciplines, would mean a year of subsidized study at Rome’s Villa Medici. It would also entitle Ravel to a five-year pension. Applicants were required to submit a fugue, as proof of their compositional skill, and then those candidates selected by the Paris Conservatory were requested to write a dramatic cantata on a text chosen by the judges.
Ravel was 26 when he came to compete for the prize, already with a number of impressive works in his portfolio, including the sublime “Pavane for a Dead Princess.” Even so, powerful factions at the conservatory were aligned against him. Three times he submitted music to the panel of judges, and three times he was denied. In exasperation, he decided to take off for year to regroup, but when he returned for a final attempt, he was informed he was now too old, despite the fact that he was still well shy of the cut-off age of 30.
The music Ravel composed for these applications is now almost totally forgotten. We’ll hear the last of these cantatas, “Alyssa,” written in 1903, based on an Irish legend, replete with sprites and fairies.
Conservatory politics may have robbed him of a chance to study in Rome, but Ravel would have the last laugh. His opponents couldn’t keep him from becoming one of France’s most beloved composers. I hope you’ll join me for “All’s Ravel That Ends Well,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.