70805 for PDF 11/05 - Ivory Classics

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very much like to be music itself.” From 1921 to 1979 Mompou composed fourteen Canciones y Danzas with the aesthetic purpose of creating a musical contrast between lyricism and rhythm. Sadness and nostalgia are contrasted with a brilliant dance. Composed in 1946, the Cancion y Danza No.8 tells the melancholy story (in the form of a slow waltz) of “El testament d’Amèlia” with the Catalan grace and elegance of “La filadora.” The work is dedicated to the pianist Ricardo Viñes. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) n12 Jeux d’eau (“Play of Water”) n15 Alborada del gracioso (“The Morning Serenade of a Delicate Buffoon”) from Miroirs In an interview published a few years before his death in 1937, Maurice Ravel spoke about himself: “I am not a “modern Maurice Ravel composer” in the strictest sense of the term, because my music, far from being “revolution,” is rather “evolution.” Although I have always been open-minded to new ideas in music I have never attempted to over-throw the accepted rules of harmony and composition. On the contrary, I have always drawn liberally from the masters for my inspiration (I have never ceased studying Mozart!), and my music, for the most part, is built upon traditions and is an outgrowth of the past. I am not a “modern composer” with a flair for writing radical harmonies and disjointed counterpoint because I have never been a slave to any one style of composition. Nor have I ever allied myself with any particular school of music. I have always felt that a composer should put on – 12 –
paper what he feels and how he feels it — irrespective of what the current style of composition may be. Great music, I have always felt, must always come from the heart. Any music created by technique and brains alone is not worth the paper it is written on.” In 1901 Ravel created one of his most admired piano works — Jeux d’eau (“Play of Water”). In his autobiography he wrote: “The Jeux d’eau, stands as the point of departure for all new pianistic expressions one may find in my works. This work, inspired by the bubbling of water and the musical sounds of fountains, waterfalls, and brooks, is built on two themes in the manner of the first movement of a sonata, without, however, being subjugated to the classic tonal formula.” The score provides a quote from Henri de Régnier: “The river god laughing at the water that tickles him.” Ravel dedicated the piece to his “beloved master Gabriel Fauré.” Benno Moiseiwitsch, who performed this work often and was one of the first pianists to record it, perhaps described it best: “Glittering drops falling — now singly, now in iridescent groups, the water flowing, leaping and laughing in merry play, molding and remolding itself into a hundred shapes, with a hundred changes of light and color.” The five pieces that make up the set Miroirs are all inspired by some sort of external image or impressions “mirrored” in sound. Ravel composed Miroirs in 1905. The fourth work in the set is entitled Alborada del gracioso (“The Morning Serenade of a Delicate Buffoon”). Dedicated to musicologist M. D. Calvocoressi, this piece is one of Ravel’s most brilliant creations. The composition is a vivid musical portrait of a Spanish dandy (one biographer called him a sort of “Andalucian Petrushka”!) in which may be heard his morning serenade and the metallic strokes on the guitar and the dry, determined crackling of castanets accenting brief halts in the rhythm. It is a pianistic tour de force that includes glissandi in fourths and thirds, long series of repeated notes, and difficult staccato passages. – 13 – — Marina and Victor Ledin, © 1998
Page 2 and 3: Earl Wild Plays Spanish and French
Page 4 and 5: Ingeniously, then, Carmelo induces
Page 6 and 7: Claude Debussy (1862-1918) n4 Refle
Page 8 and 9: Enrique Granados (1867-1916) n7 And
Page 10 and 11: children (a daughter who died short
Page 14 and 15: Earl Wild Biography Earl Wild is a
Page 16: Music by Albéniz, Debussy, Falla,

70805 for PDF 11/05 - Ivory Classics

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