Download PROGRAM NOTES Maurice Ravel - Chicago Symphony Orchestra

PROGRAM NOTES
Maurice Ravel – Alborada del gracioso
Composition History
Ravel composed Alborada del gracioso as a piano piece in 1905 and orchestrated it in 1918. The first performance of the
orchestral version was given in Paris on May 17, 1919. The score calls for three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english
horn, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani,
crotales, triangle, tambourine, castanets, side drum, cymbals, bass drum, xylophone, two harps, and strings. Performance
time is approximately seven minutes.
Performance History
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first subscription concert performances of Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso were given
at Orchestra Hall on March 6 and 7, 1925, with Frederick Stock conducting. Our most recent subscription concert
performances were given on September 22 and 27, 2005, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. The Orchestra first
performed this work at the Ravinia Festival on July 15, 1938, with Willem van Hoogstraten conducting, and most recently
on July 26, 1990, with Gianluigi Gelmetti conducting.
For the record
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra recorded Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso in 1957 with Fritz Reiner conducting for RCA,
in 1968 with Jean Martinon conducting for RCA, and in 1991 with Daniel Barenboim conducting for Erato.
Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France.
Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France.
Alborada del gracioso
Maurice Ravel was born in the French Pyrenees, only a few miles from the Spanish border, a geographical boundary he
often crossed in his music. Even though his family moved to Paris while he was still a baby, Ravel came by his fascination
with Spain naturally, for his mother was Basque and grew up in Madrid. (His Swiss father inspired in his son a love for
things precise and mechanical that carried over into his impeccable music, provoking Stravinsky to dismiss him as a
“Swiss watchmaker.”)
In 1905 Ravel composed a set of five piano pieces he called Miroirs (Mirrors), which included some of the earliest of the
Spanish music he wrote from the comfort of his Paris apartment. Alborada del gracioso, one of the three pieces which he
later transcribed for full orchestra, immediately became one of his most popular works. The original piano version, with its
impossibly fast repeated notes (it remains a challenge to all but the most skilled pianists), is so rich and evocative that
orchestrating it must have seemed redundant at first. But, perhaps more than any musician of his time, Ravel had an
extraordinary ear for sonority and color. The newly redecorated Alborada is one of his greatest sonic achievements.
Alborada means morning music, just as serenade means night music. It’s related to the French aubade and the
troubadour’s alba (literally “white of dawn”), by which means lovers are warned of the approaching dawn in time to
dampen their passions and part company. (This requires the participation of a loyal watchman or friend—like Brangäne in
Tristan and Isolde, whose warnings are famously ignored.) In the more common Spanish tradition, it’s simply any music
performed at daybreak, often to celebrate a festival or honor a person—or both, such as a bride on her wedding day. To
his Alborada, however, Ravel adds del gracioso, or “of the buffoon,” clouding the picture with the introduction of the
standard grotesque lover, akin to Don Quixote of ancient Castillian comedy. And so we have a highly spirited, almost
outrageous dance that begins with the strumming of a guitar (here given to the pizzicato strings and the harp) and
concluding with a grand and glorious racket.
Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Program notes copyright © 2009 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All Rights Reserved. Program notes may not be
printed in their entirety without the written consent of Chicago Symphony Orchestra; excerpts may be quoted if due
acknowledgment is given to the author and to Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For reprint permission, contact Denise
Wagner, Program Editor, by mail at: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 220 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60604,
or by email at [email protected].
These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs and artists subject to change
without notice.