Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin – Program Note

Maurice Ravel (1835–1937)
Le tombeau de Couperin
Composed 1919

Ravel’s purpose in Le tombeau is to approach music from a bygone era with fresh ears. The version of the work that we hear today is an orchestration of the original 1917 version of the suite for solo piano. The piano work consisted of six movements, all based on traditional dance movements from the French Baroque suite: Prélude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet, and Toccata. The orchestral version omits two of those movements, the Fugue and the Toccata.

Overall, the piece delights in providing harmonic and orchestrational flourishes
to the repetitious formalism of the dance forms. We hear Ravel’s ebullient energy, delicate layering of sound, impressionistic dissonances, chordal planing, and his sudden changes in energy and volume. He combines this with a diverse set of nods to the Baroque. He features the oboe, a typically Baroque choice, throughout the piece, most notably in the solo that opens the work (which is standard fare for orchestral auditions). And, Ravel makes use of traditional Baroque ornamental and modal harmonies as he weaves the orchestra through the dance forms that defined that era in French music.

~John Devlin
PSO Assistant Conductor, 2015-2018
Music Director, Wheeling Symphony Orchestra