Notes on the Piece
In his marvelous biographical novel about Ravel, French writer
Jean Echenoz endeavored—in just over 100 pages—to capture the elegant manners
and fastidious habits of the composer. Echenoz devoted discrete chapters to
Ravel’s bathing ritual, his struggles with insomnia, and the elaborate wardrobe
and ablutions he took with him on tour to the United States in 1927.
That same year, Ravel oversaw a recording of a beloved
early work, his String Quartet in F Major, a composition that is no less
mannered than the composer himself.
Puffing cigarettes in the London studio of
the Aeolian recording company, Ravel made sure that the quartet was performed
and recorded by his chosen ensemble, the International Quartet, in a manner
that made it more classical sounding than the notes on the page would suggest.
He wanted it to be restrained, held back, and he stressed precision in the
tempos, melodic phrasing, and harmonic language.
No single pitch could be more important than those
surrounding it. Once this level of exactitude had been reached by the
performers, Ravel gave the recording his seal of approval.
The quartet was old by the time it was recorded. Ravel completed
it in 1903, while still a student of Gabriel Fauré’s at the Paris
Conservatoire, and he hoped that it would earn him a prestigious Rome Prize in
composition. It neither won the prize nor earned him praise from his teacher.
And the reviews were mediocre. Ravel left the Conservatoire in a huff, thus
earning himself the respect of the fickle Parisian public. He admitted that the
quartet had technical problems, but he convinced himself, out of love for the
score, that these could be solved by high-caliber performers.
Ravel treasured the quartet for its classicism, its way of
looking back at and drawing on the past. Of course that past could not be
recovered, and in all of his works, there is a sense of loss. At times the
feeling is wistful, at other times melancholic, even devastating. His String
Quartet in F Major offers all of these sentiments within the constraints of a
four-movement structure that privileges cyclic return.
The first movement is an exquisite reimagining of sonata
form, the three-part structure that governed instrumental music of the late 18th
century. It’s the musical equivalent of a Bildungsroman,
a tale of educational enlightenment. Musical themes are presented, then taken
on an adventure, and finally brought back home again, sadder but wiser. Listen
carefully and you will notice that all of the elements of sonata form are
there, but disarticulated: The harmonies eschew logical patterning; dissonant
pitches are left hanging in the air; and chords of four and five notes
substitute for standard triads. The second movement breaks from the mold of
typical fast-movement forms by referring to fandango guitar playing. The third
movement is a hybrid of instrumental and vocal gestures, its three main
sections interrupted by passages redolent of Fauré’s arias. The fourth
movement, a rondo, recalls the themes of the previous movements to provide
structural cohesion for the quartet as a whole, while complicating its own
internal logic.
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