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Christopher Hrtel Nicolette from Trois Chansons (1916) by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) April, 2006 Ravels Trois Chansons

represent a significant portion of his total output of choral music. There is some speculation that he was put off of writing for chorus after a choral work he submitted to the Prix de Rome competition a decade earlier was snubbed, but whatever the reason, he wrote only six choral works. The other five were all created during the period between 1900 and 1905, and the Trois Chansons were his only a capella works. Given the quality of the rest of his music, its clear that this brief set of chansons merits further study. The subject of this analysis is the first of the Trois Chansons, Nicolette. Ravel wrote both the poetry and the music for Trois Chansons while he was waiting to be accepted into the army during the First World War. Although he wished to serve, believing that his slight build made him a perfect candidate for the newly-formed Air Corps, he had powerful and politically-connected friends who saw to it that he was kept out of combat1. Because Ravel was 41 years old in 1916 and one of the most well-known figures in France, he was assigned non-combat duty as an ambulance driver. Although he avoided the front-lines, his duty station was close enough to Verdun (the most active battlefield of the war) that he had several nearly-fatal misses. His correspondence

shows that the war affected him profoundly. It was against this backdrop of suffering and loss that the Trois Chansons were conceived. Indeed, loss is a theme that connects all three of the chansons; in the second, Trois Beaux Oiseaux du Paradis, three beautiful birds of paradise come to the singer to tell of the death of a loved one in the war. In the third, Ronde, it is innocence that is lost, as all the satyrs and goblins and gnomes and demons that lurk in the forest of Ravels childhood are scared away by grumpy adults. Nicolette is the most interesting of the three in this regard; the eponymous maid loses her virtue to the vile Seigneur Chenu. Nicolette enters into this transaction with her eyes wide open; shes trading her virginity for escape from her social station. By becoming the wife (lover? consort?) of a wealthy man, she will never have to return to the meadow. In the other two chansons, the main characters have no choices; the bereaved lover in Trois Beaux Oiseaux du Paradis is left to die, heartbroken, and the child in Ronde has to grow up eventually. Nicolette is the only character in the Trois Chansons who has the opportunity to choose her fate. One of Ravels modern biographers, Benjamin Ivry, describes the Trois Chansons as Panic works, meaning permeated by the lore of Pan, the Greek God who watches over shepherds and their flocks2. Certainly the other two chansons fit that description. In Nicolette, the influence is more subtle. The setting is folk-like; there are some fairy-

tale references (the Big Bad Wolf, Grandmas house) but the landscape of Nicolette is populated with humans. The melodic structure of Nicolette is remarkable for its simplicity. It is strophic, divided into four perfectly symmetrical 13measure verses for a total of 52 bars. The melody, which lies comfortably in the A natural minor scale, is passed from voice to voice as the new characters in each strophe are introduced. Although the melody remains intervalically almost unchanged throughout, the harmonic framework through which it is threaded is lush in its variety. The chanson is metrically stable from strophe to strophe, following this pattern: six bars in 2/4, followed by five bars of 3/4, ending with a couplet in 2/4. Within this tightly knit formal structure there would seem to be little room to maneuver, yet Ravel creates four distinct strophes, and by means of text painting and some fascinating harmonic manipulation, he never loses the listeners interest. The global harmonic structure is simple and makes use of fairly conventional tonic-dominant-tonic movement, beginning in the key of A minor, moving to a plagal half cadence in the third strophe, and then concluding with a mode shift into A major. This plagal HC at measure 34, and the final perfect authentic cadence in A major are the only true cadences in the piece; each 13-bar strophe is punctuated by an open HC at measure 8, and an open imperfect authentic cadence at

measure 13. These missing thirds have the effect of blurring the seemingly conventional harmonic structure. A closer look at each strophe reveals Ravels true harmonic intentions. The first strophe introduces Nicolette as she wanders in the meadow picking flowers and looking covetously at all the fancy houses. The most harmonically predictable of the four strophes, it begins with the melody in the soprano line over block chords, as though it were a folk song being played by an inexperienced pianist, complete with some wrong note dissonances. At the approach to the open HC in measure 8, we hear a tantalizing suggestion of bVII followed by bii6 . As we come to the end of the strophe, we feel a subtle mode shift: iv bvi III IV III (i). The ah of the accompanying voices gives a disconsolate feel to the undulating harmonic movement through the mediant. The gesture is made more poignant by the gentle ritardando and the open cadence, lacking the third, as though Nicolette has not found what she seeks. The second strophe resumes the jaunty opening tempo, this time with the melody in the bass. The block chord harmony is gone, replaced by a tongue-in-cheek scary oo sound in the accompaniment, as the melody describes Nicolettes encounter with the friendly growling wolf. In a brief foreshadowing of the next strophe, there is a strong but momentary suggestion of C major in mm. 18-19, with three successive chords; F/C, G/B and C/G. These are immediately returned

to the key of A minor, and quickly resolved to another open HC at measure 21. By this means, Ravel subtly frames certain emotional and psychological connotations of the text. The parallel modes of A represent Nicolette, expressing her various states of mind using major and minor. F major signals opportunity; love is portrayed in C major, and the key of E signifies choices she must make. The brief suggestion of C major in the second strophe pokes fun at the love the wolf is offering her. Nicolette runs breathlessly away from the leering wolf and Ravel leaves us with the same disconsolate progression that ended the first verse. The third strophe begins in a slower tempo with a startlingly bright F major chord. The basses strong G in the next bar sets up the expectation of harmonic resolution to the key of C. Ravel frustrates this by sending us back to F, stressing the importance of this opportunity for Nicolette. The alto melody introduces the pretty pageboy, dressed in blue hose and a grey doublet. Finally, C major arrives, but rather than using this key to soothe the harmonic tension, Ravel further unsettles us by shifting the whole choir into a disturbingly high tessitura. The melody moves to the tenor, who asks in falsetto, Wont you come to a gentle lover? C is only briefly tonicized, and before the listener has the chance to embrace the key of love, the harmony gracefully pirouettes out of reach through an Amin(6) chord to a plagal HC in the original key at measure 34. E major has arrived;

the time for decision is at hand. Nicolette makes her choice, and the ensuing harmony reflects her sadness with an exquisite procession of extended harmonies, colored with 9ths and 11ths, bringing us back to the lonely, open A chord at the end of the strophe. During the last five bars of the verse, the melody moves from soprano through tenor to alto, as the ensemble continues its role of Greek chorus in narrating Nicolettes tale. Nicolette also carries an interesting subtext about love as it relates to Ravels own experiences. Ravel never took a life partner, and from the accounts of contemporaries (and from his voluminous correspondence) one gets the idea that, like Nicolette, love was not in the cards for him3. When love appears to Nicolette in the form of the pretty page, he is dandyish in appearance (not unlike Ravel himself) and his part is sung by the tenors in an almost comical falsetto. The harmony and rhythm immediately surrounding this part are reminiscent of a circus calliope, as though in mockery of love. When Nicolette turns away from the page, the harmony suddenly reaches its most intense chromaticism, and the texture is at its most lyric. Ravel was once asked why he didnt replace his cherished Siamese cats when they had all passed away. He replied that he preferred the certainty of not being hurt to the risks of pleasure4. The final strophe begins with the melody in the tenor, slightly altered by the addition of Bb to turn the falling fifth into a tritone (Bb-

E). This rides above a harshly dissonant bassline, creating movement from Bb(add4) to E major, emphasizing the tritone on a harmonic as well as a melodic level. The lyrics describe Seigneur Chenu (chenu is French for hoary) as ugly, smelly, twisted, and fat. He offers Nicolette his money. (Surely, as the heavy use of the tritone suggests, this is a deal with the devil?) Nicolette wastes no time making up her mind; she quickly throws her arms around him, and the basses melody tells us, Nevermore to the meadow will she return. She has made her choice, and from her perspective it is a good one. The final harmonic progression is related to that of the other strophe endings, but rather than shifting modes between iv and IV only to end on an open A chord, Ravel starts with A minor, moving us up through the progression C D(9) Cm7 to A major. Over the last three bars the voices move sinuously up out of the murky low tessitura to the high, luminous, final A major chord, giving us a sense that at last Nicolette has achieved a state of grace; despite her loss, she has gained something that she values more than her virtue, more than lust, more than love. Nicolette is an excellent example of the choral chanson; compact, tightly knit, madrigalesque in its melodic simplicity, yet quite harmonically sophisticated. Sadly, the Trois Chansons have garnered little attention from biographers of Ravel, in some cases rating only a footnote in the chronological list of his compositions. Although his

choral works are few in number, they deserve the same level of attention that scholars are investing in his other works.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1) Maurice Ravel, by William Seroff. Henry Holt and Company, New York, New York, 1953. p. 183-188: also Ivry, p. 95 2) Maurice Ravel: A Life, by Benjamin Ivry. Welcome Rain Publishers LLC, New York, New York, 2000. p.16, 94-95 3) Ivry, p. 52 4) Ibid, p.155 Other general sources: Maurice Ravel: A Guide to Research, by Stepher Zank. Routledge Music Libraries, New York, New York, 2005 Ravel, Maurice, by Barbara L Kelly. Grove Music Online, accessed 3/15/2006 Maurice Ravel. Contemporary Musicians, Volume 25. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale, 2005

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