Classical Music | Orchestral Music

Recorded on 04/24/2004, uploaded on 03/22/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Daphnis and Chloé, Suite No. 2           Maurice Ravel

1. Lever de jour
2. Pantomime
3. Danse générale

"Étonnez-moi!" the famed Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev told the composers to whom he offered commissions to write music for his fabulous Ballets Russes in Paris - and astonish him they did. During the decade immediately prior to the outbreak of World War I, Paris unquestionably was the musical capital of Europe. The composers then living there included Igor Stravinsky, Serge Prokofiev, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, and Manuel de Falla, to name just a few. For some fifteen seasons, Diaghilev, using the imaginative scores created by these composers, mounted one spectacular ballet production after another. Most notable among these were Debussy's The Afternoon of a Faun, Stravinsky's The Firebird,Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, Satie's Parade, Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat, and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé.   Early in 1907, Diaghilev asked Ravel to write music for a ballet based upon the pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloé by the fourth-century Greek sophist Longus as translated into French by the Renaissance poet Jacques Amyot. Here was a classic tale which greatly appealed to Ravel's love for the archaic: Daphnis and Chloé, two young lovers who are devotees of the god Pan, are parted by pirates and then reunited by the god because of Chloé's resemblance to his own love, Syrinx. Ravel accepted Diaghilev's offer and, meticulous craftsman that he was, spent nearly three years working on the score. In his Autobiographical Sketch, the composer noted that he conceived Daphnis et Chloé as a "symphonie choréographique" in three parts. "My intention in writing it was to compose a vast musical fresco in which I was less concerned with archaism than with faithfully reproducing the Greece of my dreams, which is very similar to that imagined and painted by the French artists at the end of the eighteenth century. The work is structured symphonically, according to a strict plan of key sequences, out of a small number of themes, the development of which ensures the music's homogeneity."    With Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel pulled out all the stops, scoring the work for a large orchestra augmented with a wordless, off-stage, mixed chorus, a batterie of exotic percussion instruments, and an éoliphone - the dignified French name for a wind-machine. Despite numerous disagreements and difficulties which nearly caused the entire project to be scrapped, the premiere of Daphnis et Chloé took place at the Théâtre du Châttelet in Paris on June 8, 1912. The choreography was by Michel Fokine and the sets by Léon Bakst. Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina danced the title roles, and Pierre Monteux conducted the orchestra. The reviews were mixed. One critic found the work "deficient in rhythm"; another thought it had "dynamism and élan." The newspaper Le Figaro pronounced it "the most accomplished and the most poetic work which we owe to M. Diaghilev's artistic enterprise." Stravinsky simply called it "one of the most beautiful products of all French music."   The vicissitudes of the world of ballet being what they are, few, if any, of the ballets from the golden era of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes are staged today. The celebrated scores for many of them, however, have long enjoyed an independent life in concert halls and on recordings. Although complete concert performances of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé are not uncommon, the two suites the composer extracted from the score are more frequently heard, especially the second one. These two suites correspond roughly with the second and third scenes of the ballet, and each consists of three interconnected, though readily identifiable sections. The First Suite opens with "Nocturne," the music to which, one by one, statues of three nymphs come to life and comfort the disconsolate Daphnis; continues with the atmospheric "Interlude"; and concludes with "Danse guerrière," the savage dance performed by the pirates in their camp, where they are holding Chloé captive. The Second Suite opens with "Lever du jour", Ravel's majestic and evocative depiction of dawn; continues with "Pantomime," the music to which Daphnis and Chloé, now reunited, mime the story of Pan and Syrinx; and concludes with "Danse generale," the exciting, quintuple-metered bacchanale which brings the ballet to its tumultuous conclusion, with all the shepherds and shepherdesses celebrating the great love of Daphnis and Chloé.   ©-Kenneth C. Viant

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