Le Tombeau de Couperin

The piano begins in E minor, Vif, with twelve semiquavers to the bar. Longer notes are held across the running figures. Ravel specifies that the grace notes fall on the beat.

Above the first notes stands the name of Lieutenant Jacques Charlot, Ravel’s friend and a cousin of his publisher Jacques Durand. Charlot was one of the friends killed in the First World War whose names Ravel gave to the suite’s movements.

On 1 October 1914, after the war had begun, Ravel wrote to his former pupil about a French suite: “The Marseillaise doesn’t come into it at all, but there’ll be a forlane and a jig.”

The left hand takes over the semiquavers while the right hand holds its line above them. Ravel moves the semiquavers down into the bass, then back across the keyboard. The hands continue to exchange the running semiquavers and the sustained line.

The last runs descend from the treble into the low bass, where a note is held under the pedal. The hands then climb again. A high tremolo and a short final chord end the continuous movement.

The subject begins after a quaver rest, with short notes, small gaps and accents off the beat. The piano starts pianissimo. Two more voices enter in turn with the same phrase, and the earlier voices continue against each new entry.

The Fugue is dedicated to Second Lieutenant Jean Cruppi, who was killed in the First World War. His mother Louise, a pianist and salon hostess, encouraged Ravel’s early work, and his father Jean was a politician. Ravel had dedicated his opera L’Heure espagnole to Louise.

The subject’s clipped quavers move between the three parts. A held note in one voice can outlast several notes in another, and the middle voice passes between the pianist’s hands. Ravel writes separate stems and slurs for each line.

In 1919 Ravel orchestrated four movements of the suite. He left out the Fugue and the Toccata, which exist only for piano. The Fugue is in three voices, all played by one pianist.

At Meno allegro, then Lent, the quavers of the subject slow down and keep their shape. The voices move closer together and end on an E minor chord held under a fermata.

Ravel marks the 6/8 dance Allegretto, and long–short figures set its rhythm. From the quiet opening, the melody moves step by step through chords full of sharps and naturals. The first short strain is repeated.

This dance is dedicated to Lieutenant Gabriel Deluc. He was a Basque painter and a friend of Ravel, and one of the men killed in the First World War who are commemorated in Le Tombeau de Couperin.

Before writing his own Forlane, Ravel transcribed a forlane by François Couperin. The dance came from northern Italy and was taken up at the French court around 1700. Ravel’s movement keeps its dotted step and repeated phrases and sets them to his own chords.

The piano alternates detached chords with notes held across the beat. A bass note can sound on while the upper parts move to the next chord. The two dotted-crotchet beats of 6/8 continue throughout.

The later phrases keep the dance’s long–short rhythm and add trills and short grace notes. During a trill on one note, the phrase continues in the other parts. A footnote at the opening of the Durand score (1918) specifies that grace notes fall on the beat.

The final gestures are short and widely spaced. Over the last pianissimo chord Ravel writes sans ralentir (without slowing).

A turn ornaments the first note of the melody. The tune moves in three beats over an independent bass line. Ravel marked the G major opening pianissimo and Allegro moderato.

The Menuet is dedicated to Jean Dreyfus, who was killed in the First World War. Ravel wrote to his stepmother, Madame Fernand Dreyfus, from the front. She later took him into the family home in Normandy, where he recovered from military service and worked on this suite.

Ravel began in 1914 with a single piano Forlane. Military service interrupted the work, and he returned to it in the spring of 1917, after his discharge. He dedicated each piece to the memory of a friend or comrade killed in the war.

The central dance is a Musette. Its chords move over a drone, the keyboard’s imitation of a bagpipe. The tune uses B♭ and E♮, which places it in G Dorian, a minor mode with a raised sixth step.

The minuet’s first melody returns in G major. Beneath it, the left hand plays the musette’s chords, so the two dances sound together.

Marguerite Long gave the first performance of the piano suite at the Salle Gaveau on 11 April 1919. Ravel later scored four of its six movements for small orchestra, the Menuet among them. Rhené-⁠Baton conducted them at the Concerts Pasdeloup on 28 February 1920.

The left hand changes from chords to arpeggios, and the melody rises above them as the hands move farther apart. Ravel writes one last broad phrase with a crescendo, then returns the piano to pianissimo.

The closing page asks for much slowing, then Très lent. At the end Ravel told the pianist to press keys silently. The pedal clears, and only the notes whose dampers remain raised ring into the final G major chord.

Ravel begins pianissimo, with staccato semiquavers shared between the hands. The repeated notes are short and quick. By the final pages the texture has grown to chords and wide arpeggios across most of the keyboard.

The Toccata is dedicated to the memory of Captain Joseph de Marliave, a musicologist who wrote about Beethoven’s string quartets and was killed in the First World War. His widow, the pianist Marguerite Long, gave the first performance of Ravel’s completed suite.

Marguerite Long gave the first performance of the complete suite at the Salle Gaveau, Paris, on 11 April 1919. The last movement bears her husband’s name. The preceding movements carry the names of other friends of Ravel’s who were lost in the war.

Long melodic notes are held over continuing semiquavers. Ravel marks passages soutenu, sustained, and the pianist plays the held notes and the semiquavers with different touches at the same time.

The final page moves to E major, with a signature of four sharps and a fortississimo flourish. The repeated notes are now full chords, doubled by low octaves. Ravel ends the suite on a single chord.