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brilliant stroke of pianistic genius, by keeping it alive for posterity […]. Five years later, the master felt that he could adapt this little gem to his own purposes [Soirée dans Grenade].”6 This led to a conflict between Debussy and Ravel about which Manuel Rosenthal reported to Marcel Marnat in his Souvenirs: “La Soirée dans Grenade from Debussy’s Estampes (1903) seems modeled upon the music of Ravel’s Habanera (1895), which had fallen into oblivion after its disastrous first performance in March 1898. Debussy had asked the young musician for a copy of the piece, as it interested him a great deal. Upon witnessing the encomiums lavished upon the Soirée dans Grenade, however, Ravel felt obliged to publicly announce that his piece was the earlier of the two. This prompted Debussy to sever relations definitively with the younger man. Legend has it that a short while later, when Debussy was moving, the copy of the Habanera reappeared; it had fallen behind the piano … Ravel avoided throwing oil on the fire by orchestrating his work and inserting it – with its date of origin – into his Rapsodie espagnole as the third movement.” The author adds: “He [Ravel] never directly accused Debussy in front of me. Instead, he was elusive and said: ‘He [Debussy] kept it [the Habanera] longer than it was planned. I should have asked him more often to give it back to me.’”7 It seems, moreover, that Debussy also “cast a sidelong glance” at the Jeux d’Eau as well, when he wrote Les Jardins sous la pluie two years later. In 1913 he spoke of the “phenomenon of autosuggestion” upon learning that Ravel had written Soupirs and Placet futile at the very same time. In this context, it should come as no surprise that the last tableau of the Rapsodie espagnole, Feria, also slightly anticipates Debussy’s Iberia, completed in 1908. As the name suggests, Feria conjures up a bustling musical market that prefigures the Bacchanale from Daphnis et Chloé and borrows several motifs from the jota, a popular Aragonese dance. The wealth of colors in this frenetic, diabolical dance also brings to mind Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol, even if it is not at all as gaudy. Here we can see particularly clearly the art of Ravel’s crescendo, which announces the unbridled finale of La Valse. Stravinsky might be suspected of having “copied” in 1910 the last two measures of the Rapsodie espagnole (with the woodwind’s p –fff –p on one breath) at the end of the Danse infernale in the Firebird. Be that as it may, this ultimately remains a creative rivalry that gave birth to masterpieces. Rhythm and motion are the determinant stylistic characteristics of the Rapsodie espagnole score, which, next to an amazing gift for stimulating developments, manifests a great wealth of ideas and a variety of uncommon sounds. These compelling pages are so full of instrumental details that it is worth taking a closer look at a few of them: the division of the string desks (in the Prélude and the Habanera), which produces a wonderful transparency; the arpeggios in harmonics of the solo violin (Prélude, m. 54); the repeated down-bows at the frog (Prélude, mm. 32–35); the effects produced by using the fingerboard (Malagueña, mm. 40–45) or the bowstick (Feria, mm. 127–130) and various kinds of glissando effects like the one in the double bass solo in the high register (Feria, mm. 75ff.) or the glissando instruction: “Slide the finger lightly over the string near the bridge.” (Feria, m. 6). Ravel also makes virtuoso use of harmonics and does not shy from entrusting the harp with a high G (Feria, mm. 1–6, 14–16) and fivenote flageolet chords (Feria, mm. 88, 139f.). Also noteworthy is the alternation between “muted” and “stopped without mute” at the horns (Prélude, mm. 56–60). Among the instruments, one should note the sarrusophone, which, with its supple articulation and its full sonorities in the lower range, provides an enhancing alternative to the contrabassoon. With respect to harmony, Ravel’s melodies are resolutely modal. They echo the ancient modes as well as the popular songs of the Spanish regions (Malagueña, m. 73, Habanera, m. 9). The little cluster formed of two superimposed minor seconds at the beginning of the Habanera
can be seen as a special ingredient of Ravel’s musical idiom; the central note (here, C sharp) is generally the dominant of the key. Ravel confided to Arthur Hoérée that he owed this idea to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. What is truly amazing is that the dominant does not appear until measure 7, whereas the resolution of the cluster enters on an appoggiatura chord that is left in suspension. No matter whether we look at Ravel’s methods or means, his artistry is supreme. The fact that the Rapsodie espagnole is his first essay in orchestral writing (if we leave aside the overture to Shéhérazade) makes his achievement here all the more remarkable. In this respect, Roland-Manuel’s judgment is absolutely spot-on: “It is in the Rapsodie espagnole that we hear for the first time this sinuous, feline orchestral writing of exemplary transparency, clarity and vigor – silky-soft yet dry sonorities that become something like Ravel’s trademark.”8 Jean Marnold points out the wealth of this “legerdemain of new sonorities,” yet exhorts us to reflect on the appropriateness of such extreme lavishness for so few pages (there are enough effects to orchestrate three symphonies with): “This overabundance underlines the modest dimensions of the pieces in which it unfolds as if in a constantly changing but narrow kaleidoscope.”9 Gustave Samazeuilh pays tribute to the “rocking rhythm of the Habanera and the amusing light-footedness of the Feria finale, which reaches its evocative goal without having to fear a perilous comparison with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol or Chabrier’s España.”10 “A wispy, erratic and ephemeral work,” opined Gaston Carraud the day after the premiere in his review in La Liberté, which impertinently contradicts Samazeuilh’s view: “… a kind of fitful sketch by an apprentice painter who, though artistically gifted, is all too forced and self-involved, and always putting off starting a new painting until the next day … To me, this sounds like a second-hand Spain, very close to Chabrier and especially to Lalo, served in the current fashion.”11 Pierre Lalo (the composer’s son), who never liked Ravel very much, poked fun at the effects produced by the muted instruments, and, in Le Temps, attacked the group of Apaches: “When are these young people finally going to remove the mute from the trumpets?”12 The clique of remorseless detractors was unable to hinder the Rapsodie espagnole’s rapid march into the repertoire. A few years later, judgment was no longer being passed on the work, but on its interpretation. While on his extended tour of the United States in 1928, which took him from one end of this gigantic land to the other, Ravel was able to conduct the Rapsodie espagnole (“at sight”) in Boston and in New York, where the critic of the New York Times called the execution “imprecise and wobbly,” just this side of the catastrophic in the last section. “As a conductor,” he added, “[Ravel] stands erect and, for the occasional attack or crescendo, seems to crouch, so diminutive is he …”13 There were four recordings of the Rapsodie espagnole at the composer’s death. Piero Coppola had recorded the work with the Grammophone Symphony Orchestra, Gabriel Pierné with the Orchestre de l’Association des Concerts Colonne, Albert Wolff with the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux and Leopold Stokowski with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, the direction of which he had assumed in 1912. In a special number of the Revue musicale dedicated to Ravel in 1938, Paul Landormy sang the praise of the Philadelphia performance: “A recording of faultless clarity and purity … yet there are slight reservations concerning Stokowski’s interpretation. One could reproach him for conducting the Rapsodie espagnole with overly violent effects, like a piece by Wagner.”14 Aside from “a few minor examples of carelessness in details,” Landormy also praises Albert Wolff’s recording, which “is certainly the best one made before Stokowski, much clearer than its predecessors and with sometimes most appealing shadings.” The recording made in 1945 by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra is sometimes slow, but of opulent and scintillating