Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Jeux d’eau
Jeux d’eau (1901) is the first great Symbolist work
for piano and, as such, inaugurates an entirely new style of keyboard writing. All the
problems that beset Symbolist writers and painters - how to achieve unity of form and
meaning, action and contemplation, movement and stillness - are handled with seemingly
effortless command. The influence of Liszt is paramount, especially Les jeux d’eaux a
la Villa d’Este and Au bord d’une source; although Ravel tells us that the work
is constructed out of two themes, like a sonata-movement, he has learned from Liszt how to
produce a work of contemplation rather than argument, where the material is not developed
but repeated with minute variations of decoration, harmony and texture, an accumulation of
musical gestures which constantly re-iterate and reinforce the essential inner theme of
the piece. Technically, he was able to extend the ideas of Liszt by harnessing the greatly
enhanced resonant properties of the modern grand piano to new sound concepts he had
encountered at Paris Exhibitions, the sounds of oriental ethnic instruments with their
precise attacks, indefinite ends, and added resonances. His friend and pupil, the composer
Maurice Delage has put his finger on the fundamental difference from Liszt when he refers
to the ’éblouissement a-sentimental’ of jeux d’eau, something emphasised by the
epigram by Henri de Régnier, disciple of Mallarmé, which heads the score: ’Dieu fluvial
riant de l’eau qui le chatouille’ (River god laughing at the water as it tickles him). The
technical innovations that produced this combination of movement and stasis, of which a
fountain is the perfect image, were not lost on Debussy: armed with its example and that
of Ravel’s then unpublished Habañera (1895) for two pianos, the score of which he
had borrowed, he produced Pagodes and La soirée dans Grénade, the first
two pieces of Estampes, his first great work for piano.
© Paul Crossley 1983
