Trois Chansons by Maurice Ravel 4-Part - Sheet Music

SKU: CA.7006900

ISBN 9790007131203. 8.27 x 11.69 inches.

In the winter of 1914/1915, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, Maurice Ravel composed his Trois Chansons as settings of his own texts. With these three musical stories Ravel managed to create little jewels of a cappella choral literature, even In the midst of the "nightmare", as he himself described the times. Yet the bleakness of the situation can be sensed only in the second piece, in which Drei Vögel aus dem Paradies (Three Birds from Paradise) deliver to a girl the news of her lover's death on the battlefield.

The French chanson of the sixteenth century serves as a musical model for the lightness of the other two songs. In the first piece Ravel also borrows from romantic fairy-tale motifs, when Little Red Riding Hood, aka Nicolette, escapes the wolf, but ultimately allows herself to be seduced by the riches of an old man instead of returning the love of a handsome young man. The third song Ronde (Roundelay) is a tongue-in-cheek recital of the horror stories that older men and women tell the young to scare them away from the forest. With a flourish Ravel reels off a list of all the frightening mythical forest creatures – an impressive collection of French tongue twisters.