Shéhérazade

The two works that marked Maurice Ravel’s coming of age as a composer are the String Quartet, completed in April 1903, and Shéhérazade, which followed a few months later that year. Each perfectly illustrates a side of his art that blossomed magnificently in the coming years, and both are clearly indebted to Debussy, yet moving several steps further forward. The quartet springs from Debussy’s String Quartet and displays Ravel’s meticulous command of balance and technique; Shéhérazade takes its vocal style from Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande, first performed in 1902, and bathes it in a lush, sensuous orchestration.

Orchestral songs in the 19th century had usually been based on songs originally written for the intimacy of the salon. Shéhérazade was first published with piano accompaniment and can certainly be performed in that way, but it was conceived as an orchestral work for the concert hall, exploring a complex new harmonic language and an advanced orchestral palette. Both of these were to some extent indebted to Rimsky-Korsakov, who composed a Scheherazade of his own in 1888, but Ravel’s music is already sharply distinct from that of both Rimsky-Korsakov and Debussy.

Ravel selected three poems from a collection by his friend Léon Leclère, a composer, painter, poet, and member of the avant-garde group Les Apaches, of which Ravel was also a member. Under the transparently Wagnerian pseudonym Tristan Klingsor, Leclère published a hundred poems in his collection Shéhérazade. Their mysterious and “exotic” colors — much in vogue in turn-of-the-century Paris — appealed greatly to Ravel, who responded with music that reflects whatever hints of the Far East that the words give out. (While some of Klingsor’s poetic language and characterizations of “Asian” culture are rather reductionist by contemporary standards, this does little to detract from Ravel’s remarkable setting of the texts.)

In “Asie” (Asia), the poet imagines not only the pleasure of visiting distant fabled lands but also recounting his adventures afterwards. Eastern images are suggested throughout, and China is specifically evoked in the music. A climax is reached at the thought of dying out of love or out of hatred, and the song, like the other two, ends softly, the excitement of adventure now only a memory.

“La flûte enchantée” (The Enchanted Flute) owes its title, but nothing else, to Mozart, and puts the orchestral flute in the limelight. It is a love song, sung perhaps by an enslaved girl in a harem, in response to her lover playing the flute outside her window. 

The last song, “L’indifférent” (The Indifferent One), is slower and quieter than the others, but no less penetrating. Is the boy indifferent to the watcher, or is it the other way ’round? And the ambiguous sex of the watcher? Some observers have interpreted this song as a clue to Ravel’s own sexuality, a subject which left his even his friends guessing to the end of his days.

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.

SUNG TEXTS

Shéhérazade
by Maurice Ravel

Text by Tristan Klingsor (Léon Leclère)
English translation by Hugh Macdonald

I. Asie (Asia)

Asie, Asie, Asie,
Vieux pays merveilleux des contes de nourrice
Où dort la fantaisie comme une impératrice
En sa forêt tout emplie de mystère.
Je voudrais m’en aller avec la goëlette
Qui se berce ce soir dans le port
Mystérieuse et solitaire,
Et qui déploie enfin ses voiles violettes
Comme un immense oiseau de nuit dans le ciel d’or.

Je voudrais m’en aller vers les îles de fleurs,
En écoutant chanter la mer perverse
Sur un vieux rythme ensorceleur.
Je voudrais voir Damas et les villes de Perse
Avec les minarets légers dans l’air.
Je voudrais voir de beaux turbans de soie
Sur des visages noirs aux dents claires.

Je voudrais voir des yeux sombres d’amour
Et des prunelles brillantes de joie
En des peaux jaunes comme des oranges;
Je voudrais voir des vêtements de velours
Et des habits à longues franges.

Je voudrais voir des calumets entre des bouches
Tout entourées de barbe blanche;
Je voudrais voir d’âpres marchands aux regards louches,
Et des cadis, et des vizirs
Qui du seul mouvement de leur doigt qui se penche
Accordent vie ou mort au gré de leur désir.

Je voudrais voir la Perse, et l’Inde et puis la Chine,
Les mandarins ventrus sous les ombrelles,
Et les princesses aux mains fines,
Et les lettrés qui se querellent
Sur la poésie et sur la beauté;
Je voudrais m’attarder au palais enchanté
Et comme un voyageur étranger
Contempler à loisir des paysages peints
Sur des étoffes en des cadres de sapin
Avec un personnage au milieu d’un verger.

Je voudrais voir des assassins souriants
Du bourreau qui coupe un cou d’innocent
Avec son grand sabre courbé d’Orient.
Je voudrais voir des pauvres et des reines;
Je voudrais voir des roses et du sang;
Je voudrais voir mourir d’amour ou bien de haine.
Et puis m’en revenir plus tard
Narrer mon aventure aux curieux de rêves
En élevant comme Sindbad ma vieille tasse arabe
De temps en temps jusqu’à mes lèvres
Pour interrompre le conte avec art …

Asia, Asia, Asia,
Wonderful old land from stories told in the cradle,
Where dreams sleep like an empress
In her deeply mysterious forest.
I long to take the schooner
Lying now in the harbor,
Mysterious and solitary,
Spreading its purple sails
Like an immense nocturnal bird in a golden sky.

I long to sail to islands of flowers
While listening to the sea’s wicked song
With its ancient bewitching rhythm.
I long to see Damascus and the cities of Persia
With its delicate minarets in the air.
I long to see those lovely silken turbans
Over black faces with bright teeth.

I long to see those sultry amorous looks
And eyes that flash with joy
And skin as yellow as oranges;
I long to see velvet garments
And coats with long fringes.

I long to see pipes grasped by teeth
With a white beard all around;
I long to see grasping traders with shifty eyes,
And cadis and viziers
Who grant the favor of life or death
At will, with the mere lift of a finger.

I long to see Persia, and India, then China,
With big-bellied mandarins under sunshades,
And princesses with delicate hands,
And scholars arguing
About poetry and beauty;
I long to linger in an enchanted palace
And as a stranger from afarEnjoy at leisure those landscapes painted
On fabrics in pinewood frames,
With a figure standing in an orchard.

I long to see assassins smirking
At the executioner who severs an innocent head
With his big, curved, oriental saber.
I long to see poor people and queens;
I long to see roses and blood;
I long to see death from love, or from hatred.
And then later return
To tell my tale to those who enjoy dreams,
Every now and then raising my old Arabian cup,
Like Sindbad, to my lips,
Skillfully pausing in my story …

II. La flûte enchantée (The Enchanted Flute)

L’ombre est douce et mon maître dort,
Coiffé d’un bonnet conique de soie
Et son long nez jaune en sa barbe blanche.
Mais moi, je suis éveillée encor
Et j’écoute au dehors
Une chanson de flûte où s’épanche
Tour à tour la tristesse ou la joie.

Un air tour à tour langoureux ou frivole
Que mon amoureux chéri joue,
Et quand je m’approche de la croisée,
Il me semble que chaque note s’envole
De la flûte vers ma joue
Comme un mystérieux baiser.

The shadows are soft and my master is asleep,
With a conical silk bonnet on his head
And his long yellow nose buried in his white beard.
But I am still awake
And I listen to the song
Of a flute outside, pouring out
Now misery, now joy.

A melody by turns languorous and skittish
Played by my devoted lover,
And when I go near the window,
It seems as though every note flies
From the flute to my cheek
Like a mysterious kiss.

III. L’indifférent (The Indifferent One)

Tes yeux sont doux comme ceux d’une fille,
Jeune étranger,
Et la courbe fine
De ton beau visage de duvet ombragé
Est plus séduisante encor de ligne.

Ta lèvre chante sur le pas de ma porte
Une langue inconnue et charmante
Comme une musique fausse … 
Entre!
Et que mon vin te réconforte …

Mais non, tu passes
Et de mon seuil je te vois t’éloigner
Me faisant un dernier geste avec grâce
Et la hanche légèrement ployée
Par ta démarche féminine et lasse ...

Your eyes are as sweet as a girl’s,
Young stranger,
And the delicate curve
Of your handsome face with its downy shadow
Is even more attractive.

Your lips sing at my doorstep
An enticing unknown language
Like music out of tune …
Come in!
I have wine to refresh you …

But no, you go off,
And I see you pass my door
With a last graceful gesture
And your hips slightly tilted
By your languid feminine gait …