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Maurice Ravel: “Soupir”
From Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913)
The early 20th-century French composer Maurice Ravel, best known for powerfully rhythmic pieces such as the toe-tapping Bolero and the wickedly parodic La valse, was also capable of creating music of the utmost expressive refinement, as shown by this piece from a setting of the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé.
“Soupir” is written for an unconventional chamber ensemble of soprano, two flutes, two clarinets, string quartet, and piano. The piece begins with a striking passage played by the strings: a repeating loop of cascading arpeggio patterns in which the combination of natural and artificial string harmonics and six-against-eight hemiola obscures the already ambiguous harmony. More remarkable than this texture itself is the function it serves in the composition, extending over the first 16 of the song’s 37 measures, and lasting a full two minutes—half of the total duration—in performance.
This music, with its shimmering sense of motion-in-stasis, evokes perfectly the conjunction of timeless repose and breathless anticipation in Mallarmé’s text. The singer’s melody unfolds in gentle pentatonic turns while the piano, flutes, and clarinets enter and gradually fill out the texture. The climax on the word fidele (“faithfully”) and the ensuing descent of the vocal line is a thing of rare and delicate beauty.
In the second half of the song, corresponding to the second stanza of Mallarmé’s poem, the shimmering string texture falls away, replaced by a wistful and languorous chordal accompaniment. Toward the very end, with the dying word rayon (“ray”), a fragment of the original texture reappears, an echo or afterimage of unmistakable melancholy.
Played 170 time(s).
October 13, 2010, 11:49am
