Gaspard de la nuit
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Gaspard de la nuit: Trois Poemes pour Piano d'apres Aloysius Bertrand is a piece for solo piano by Maurice Ravel. It has three movements, each based on a poem by Aloysius Bertrand:
- Ondine, a tale of a water sprite and her kingdom.
- Le Gibet, a poem about a hanged man dying slowly, seeing his last sunrise.
- Scarbo, a small fiend, half goblin, half ghost, making pirouttes, disappearing and scaring a person and his home.
The work was premiered on January 9, 1909 in Paris by Ricardo Viņes.
This piece is famous for its incredible difficulty; Ravel intended it to be more difficult than Balakirev's Islamey. Ondine is reminiscent of the tinkling of the water in a stream, beautifully woven with cascades. This movement was intended to describe the water sprite in Bertrand's poem, attempting lure men into her domain. In Le gibet, a B flat octave is played 153 times, to signify the tolling bell for a hung man in the distance. Scarbo is probably the most difficult of the work, with its terrifying crescendos. Its incredible speeds make it seem almost impossible to play. The impressions present in this movement espouse themselves to the fiendish mischief committed by a ghost imp during the night, fading in and out of vision while changing forms, which is portrayed through those difficult crescendos.
The composer commented on this piece: "I wanted to make a caricature of romanticism. Perhaps I got carried away."
The manuscript currently resides in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
External Links
- Poem Translations, Musical Background (http://www.russischeschule.com/Ravel.htm)
- Piano Society.com — Ravel — Gaspard de la nuit (http://www.pianosociety.com/index.php?id=66) — A free recording of "Ondine" in MP3 format.
- ClassicalCat.com, Gaspard de la nuit (http://www.classicalcat.com/ravel_m/gdln.htm) — Several complete MP3 recordings available of the work.