Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose)

1908–⁠10; ballet 1911–⁠12 · Piano duet; orchestral suite and expanded ballet

Written for the Godebski children, then orchestrated and enlarged into a ballet. Sleeping Beauty’s pavane and the fairy garden frame tales by Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy and Madame Leprince de Beaumont.

2 min

Recording

I. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormantDuo Campion/Vachon · 1992
1:38
The Pavane of Sleeping Beauty opens Ma mère l’Oye with twenty quiet bars for four hands at one piano. The melody passes between the two players.
Listening notes · joins
1. Opening for piano duet
  The lower player begins alone with a short stepwise tune. The upper player follows, and from bar 5 plays a higher melody over soft repeated notes. Both parts lie comfortably under the hands.
2. First performance, Salle Gaveau, 1910
  Ravel dedicated the suite to Mimie and Jean Godebski. At the first public performance, on 20 April 1910 in Paris’s Salle Gaveau, Jeanne Leleu and Geneviève Durony sat at the piano. They were eleven and fourteen.
3. Return of the upper melody
  The earlier upper melody of bars 5–⁠8 returns in bars 17–⁠20 over the same softly repeated accompaniment, with an altered ending. Ravel marks a rallentando and places a fermata over the last notes. The two players finish together.
Joins
1. Melody descends to the middle register
  The high answer descends into the middle of the keyboard. The upper player’s repeated accompanying notes stop, leaving a line of quavers above the lower player’s slower notes. The quiet dynamic and the unhurried four-beat bar continue.
2. Return of the high melody
  The upper part returns to its high melody at pp, with repeated notes below it. The lower player restores the earlier accompaniment. A rallentando and a fermata lengthen the final bar.
Open in the Concert Hall

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