Mother Goose Suite
Joseph Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Basses-Pyrenees, in the Basque region of France just a short distance from the Spanish border, on March 7, 1875, and died in Paris on December 28, 1937. He composed Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) originally for piano four-hands in the years 1908-10. In 1911, he created an orchestral suite from the five piano pieces and also expanded it into a ballet score, adding a Prelude and the Spinning Wheel Dance. The original piano version was premiered by two Conservatoire students, 11-year-old Jeanne Leleu and 14-year-old Geneviève Durony, at a concert of the Societe Musicale Independante in Paris on April 20, 1910; the ballet version was first performed at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris in January 1912. The present five-movement orchestral suite was likely given its premiere by Henry Wood and the Queen’s Hall Orchestra on August 27, 1912, during the London Proms.
The score of Ravel’s Mother Goose calls for 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon), 2 horns, timpani, percussion (xylophone, triangle, cymbals, tam-tam, bass drum), glockenspiel, celesta, harp, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
He is a child and he is an old man.
—the critic Emile Vuillermoz on Ravel (1922)
Ravel frequently visited his friends Ida and Cipa Godebski and their two children, Mimi and Jean, at their country house, La Grangette. And, as Mimi recalls in her fond memoir, when he was not polishing off what was meant to be “the next day’s cold meat” or arguing about Mozart, whom he idolized and Cipa detested, Ravel was most likely to have engaged himself with the children in all manner of practical jokes and storytelling. Their favorites were “Laideronette” and “Beauty and the Beast,” both of which Ravel put into the original four-hand version of Ma Mère l’oye, which he finished at La Grangette in 1910 and dedicated to the children. He even proposed that they premiere it, but Mimi and Jean “froze” at the idea, so the task was given over to two other youngsters, Jeanne Leleu, a pupil of Marguerite Long who later won the Grand Prix de Rome, and Geneviève Durony. Ravel was delighted with the performance, and responded in writing the very next day to Mademoiselle Leleu: “When you are a great virtuoso and I either an old fogey, covered with honors, or else completely forgotten, you will perhaps have pleasant memories of having given an artist the very rare joy of hearing a work of his, of a rather special nature, interpreted exactly as it should be.”
Ravel rejoiced in animals and children, and many of his works reflect a soul brought to life by fantasy, fable, exotic places, and romanticized history. That he took pleasure in Mother Goose is no surprise, especially given “her” French roots. Ravel’s main source was the collection by Charles Perrault, Les Contes de la Mère l’oye (1697), which includes “La Belle au bois dormant” (“Sleeping Beauty”) and “Le Petit Poucet” (“Tom Thumb”). He also turned to Marie-Catherine, Comtesse d’Aulnoy (ca. 1650-1705) for “Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes” (“Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas”), and Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711-80) for “Les Entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête” (“Conversations of Beauty and the Beast”). One could imagine Ravel asking the young Mimi, “What would happen if, on a moonlit night, Sleeping Beauty and Tom Thumb met Beauty and the Beast and the rest of the fairies in the forest?” In this sense we may view the ballet version as Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream transferred to the bois with Goose-footed Bertha in control at her spinning wheel.
Arbie Orenstein notes that Ravel made a practice of refashioning his music in an “attempt to draw out every ounce of its inherent possibilities.” The complete ballet Ma Mère l’oye is just that, the final lap in a journey from a collection of five discrete impressions in miniature for piano to a thematically and dramatically integrated full-scale orchestral narrative for the stage. Ravel expanded his petite suite by adding a “Prélude” and the “Danse du Rouet et Scène” (“Spinning-Wheel Dance and Scene”). He also nearly doubled the length of individual movements, eliminated their closed endings (and hence the pauses in between), and translated their delicate pianism into vivid but transparently Mozartian orchestral colors. He provided momentum not so much by percussion (now an exotic spice) as by dance—a pavane, a waltz—to underscore the physicality of slumber, conversation, bath, and music-making.
An ancient and serene woodland lullaby of flutes and violins gently rock Sleeping Beauty over a spare accompaniment of pizzicato strings and harp harmonics. Solo violin and cello in a falling chromatic line, reminiscent of the opening of Debussy’s Faun prelude, announce the next tableau: Tom Thumb is lost in the woods, and Ravel’s long-breathed melody circles appropriately around itself as chirping birds eat the crumbs Tom has left as a guide. The gentle but constant motion leads to a harp and celesta cadenza followed by Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas. With its black-key pentatonicism and shimmering orchestral colors, this is the liveliest of the movements. Porcelain girls and boys regale the exotic little empress in her bath with music, their instruments mimicked in the orchestra by harp, celesta, glockenspiel, piccolo, and flute. Conversations of Beauty and the Beast casts Beast as contrabassoon proposing marriage and revealing himself upon Beauty’s acceptance to be a handsome prince, once bewitched. The final movement begins with a recomposition of the opening theme transferred to strings in triple meter and leads to The Fairy Garden with its brilliant combination of celesta, harp, and solo violin.
Helen M. Greenwald
Musicologist, cellist, and translator Helen Greenwald teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music. In addition to her publications in scholarly journals, she has presented talks at the Salzburg and Verona Festivals, New York City Opera, Los Angeles Opera League, and Boston Lyric Opera. Her critical edition of Rossini’s Zelmira was presented at the Rossini Opera Festival in 2009 and released on DVD; Riccardo Muti chose her critical edition of Verdi’s Attila for his 2010 debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
The first American performance of Ravel’s five-movement Mother Goose Suite (made from the piano pieces, as opposed to the full ballet score) was given by Walter Damrosch with the New York Symphony Orchestra on November 8, 1912.
The first Boston Symphony performance of the Mother Goose Suite was given by Karl Muck on December 27, 1913, followed by performances in Boston and on tour later in the season.