Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) composed his magically evocative song cycle, Shéhérazade, in 1903 (the same year as his String Quartet and the first movement of his Sonatine for piano solo), setting for high voice and piano three poems by his friend, Tristan Klingsor (pseudonym of Léon Leclère, 1874-1966). The orchestral version soon followed, and it seems likely that the orchestrations were as much a part of Ravel's original conception as the vocal part and harmonies. The cycle was written for either soprano or tenor, and although it is seldom performed by a man, in 2004 baritone Konrad Jarnot released a recording with pianist Helmut Deutsch.
In 1903, Klingsor published a collection of 100 poems inspired by reading the Middle Eastern folktales known collectively as One Thousand and One Nights (or, Arabian Nights) which lately had been published in a French translation. He titled his poetry collection Schéhérazade, chosen in homage to Rimsky-Korsakov's similarly inspired symphonic suite, of which both he and Ravel were fans--it is perhaps significant that at the mention of "Sinbad" toward the end of the first song the solo violin, featured so prominently in Rimsky Korsakov's suite, can be heard in Ravel's orchestral setting (albeit doubled an octave below by Ravel). Ravel and Klingsor were likewise big fans of Debussy's revolutionary opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, and they reportedly attended all 14 performances of the opera's premiere run in 1902.[1] When Ravel decided to set three of Klingsor's poems he made the poet re-read the lines aloud repeatedly, hoping to capture the rhythms of French speech patterns as perfectly as had Debussy.
Often warm and glittering but suffused with a melancholy longing, Ravel's music transforms our understanding of the poetry, particularly in the first and final songs. When first performed in 1904, Asie was sung as the last rather than first song. But when it came time to publish the score the composer changed the order of the songs, instead concluding with L'indifférent, in which Ravel "once suggested that the key to his own personality lay hidden ..." [2]
- On the surface, Asie appears to be little more than a catalog of exotic enticements available to travelers--but the music suggests that the narrator is someone who feels trapped in a mundane existence, with the only likely escape found in reading the adventures of others.
- La flûte enchantée is a straightforward depiction of romantic yearning as it relates how lovers, separated by constraints of servitude, discover that they can still form an immediate connection through music.
- At first reading, L'indifférent comes across merely as a libertine eyeing a would-be conquest; but through the music one is left instead with the impression of a traveler isolated in a foreign land hoping to make any sort of human contact to overcome deep loneliness, but who seems somehow emotionally powerless to interact. It becomes almost as though Klingsor, when heard through the amplification of Ravel's music, has captured in a few lines what Thomas Mann related in his 1912 novella, Death in Venice.
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1. Ravel and Klingsor, among other young Parisian musicians, painters and writers, formed a society called Les Apaches whose purpose was to promote ground-breaking artistic achievements, and mutually supporting Debussy's controversial opera was chief among their efforts.
2. Quoting EMI producer Ronald Kinloch Anderson in his notes for the Janet Baker/Sir John Barbirolli recording re-released in 1975.
--Notes and English version of the text, c2009, by Edward Lein (Please notify & credit if reprinting)
CLICK HERE for a pdf file of the piano-vocal score
CLICK HERE for recordings of live performances on InstantEncore
Note on the translation: Ravel was exacting in his rhythmic setting of the French text, and the intent in my English version was to match the rhythm of the French original, syllable for syllable as closely as I could (but not with the intent that the English version might be substituted in performance!). Consequently a few words, mostly adjectives, not explicit in the French have been added to "fill-in-the-blanks" of the English -- these additions appear in gray font, and I would have no problem if they were omitted in reprinting. Less frequently a French word or two may have been omitted as long as the meaning isn't altered. A few other minor liberties have been taken in hope of making the English sound a little more linguistically idiomatic or "poetic," e.g., in the third line, "Où dort la fantaisie ..." which literally translates as "Where sleeps the fantasy ..." has been rendered: "Where sleeping fantasy lies ..."
1. Asie 1. Asia
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Asie, Asie. Asie!
Vieux pays merveilleux des contes de nourrice
Où dort la fantaisie comme une impératrice
En sa forêt emplie de mystère.
Asie, je voudrais m'en aller avec la goélette
Qui se berce ce soir dans le port,
Mystérieuse et solitaire,
Et qui déploie enfin ses voiles violettes
Comme un immense oiseau de nuit dans le ciel d'or.
Je voudrais m'en aller vers des îles de fleurs
En écoutant chanter la mer perverse
Sur un vieux rythme ensorceleur.
Je voudrais voir Damas et les villes de Perse
Avec les minarets légers dans l'air.
Je voudrais voir de beaux turbans de soie
Sur des visages noirs aux dents claires;
Je voudrais voir des yeux sombres d'amour
Et des prunelles brillantes de joie
En des peaux jaunes comme des oranges;
Je voudrais voir des vêtements de velours
Et des habits à longues franges.
Je voudrais voir des calumets entre des bouches
Tout entourées de barbe blanche;
Je voudrais voir d'âpres marchands aux regards louches,
Et des cadis, et des vizirs
Qui du seul mouvement de leur doigt qui se penche
Accordent vie ou mort au gré de leur désir.
Je voudrais voir la Perse, et l'Inde, et puis la Chine,
Les mandarins ventrus sous les ombrelles,
Et les princesses aux mains fines,
Et les lettrés qui se querrellent
Sur la poésie et sur la beauté;
Je voudrais m'attarder au palais enchanté
Et comme un voyageur étranger
Contemple à loisir des paysages peints
Sur des étoffes en des cadres de sapin
Avec un personnage au milieu d'un verger;
Je voudrais voir des assassins souriant
Du bourreau qui coupe un cou d'innocent
Avec son grand sabre courbé d'Orient.
Je voudrais voir des pauvres et des reines;
Je voudrais voir des roses et du sang;
Je voudrais voir mourir d'amour ou bien de haine.
Et puis m'en revenir plus tard
Narrer mon aventure aux curieux de rêves
En élevant comme Sinbad ma vieille tasse arabe
De temps en temps jusqu'à mes lèvres
Pour interrompre le conte avec art ... |
Asia, Asia, Asia!
Olden and wondrous land of tales dreamt by nursemaids,
Where sleeping fantasy lies like an empress fair
In her forest o'erflowing with mystery.
Asia ... I should like to set out aboard the sea-bound schooner
Which is rocking this evening in port,
Mysterious and solitary;
And which at last unfurls its flutt'ring sails of purple
Like an immense night bird aloft in the gold'n sky.
I should like to sail off towards islands of flow'rs
While list'ning to the perverse sea singing
In its old and bewitching rhythm.
I'd like to see Damascus, and cities of Persia
Where light minarets pierce through the air.*
I'd like to see those fine turbans of silk
Over black faces with white teeth gleaming;
I should wish to see eyes shaded with love
From which pupils shine brilliantly with joy
Against complexions as tawny as oranges;
I should like to see fine vestments made of velvet
And flowing robes with long, long fringes.
I'd like to see earthenware pipes stuck into pursed mouths
Wholly surrounded by white whiskers;
I'd like to see rough-edged merchants cast dirty glances,
And the qadis and the viziers,
Who with just the mere movement of their crooked finger
Can dispense life or death at their desire's whim.
I'd see Persia, and India, then also China:
Plump mandarins sitting under umbrellas,
And princesses with hands most lithe,
And wise scholars who yet are quarr'ling
Over poetry and over beauty;
I should like to pause in an enchanted palace
And, like any foreign traveller,
Contemplate at leisure those paintings of landscapes,
On finest fabrics in frames crafted out of fir,
Picturing someone in the middle of a grove;
I'd like to see cruel assassins smile as
An executioner lops a guiltless head
With his big Oriental scimitar.
I'd like to see base paupers and grand queens, too;
I'd like to see red roses and red blood;
I'd like to see death caused by love, or else by hatred.
And later then I'll return home
To share my adventure with curious young dreamers;
And I will raise--just like Sinbad--my old Arabian goblet
Up to my lips every now and then,
Interrupting the tale for artful effect ...
* For a literal translation use: "With light minarets in the air." |
2. La flûte enchantée 2. The Enchanted Flute
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L'ombre est douce et mon maître dort,
Coiffé d'un bonnet conique de soie
Et son long nez jaune en sa barbe blanche.
Mais moi, je suis éveillée encore
Et j'écoute au dehors
Une chanson de flûte où s'épanche
Tour à tour la tristesse ou la joie.
Un air tour à tour langoureux ou frivole,
Que mon amoureux chéri joue.
Et quand je m'approche de la croisée
Il me semble que chaque note s'envole
De la flûte vers ma joue
Comme un mystérieux baiser. |
Darkness soothes and my master sleeps,
Coiffed in a cone-shaped night-bonnet of silk,
With his long nose yellow on his white whiskers.
But I, I'm wakened and roused again,
And I hear from outdoors
The lone song of a flute o'erflowing
At first with sorrow but then with such joy!
An air turning from languishing to frivolous,
Which my own dearest lover plays.
And as I move closer to the window,
To me it's as though each note has come winging
From his flute onto my cheek
Like a mysterious caress. |
3. L'indifférent 3. The Indifferent One
Tes yeux sont doux comme ceux d'une fille,
Jeune étranger,
Et la courbe fine
De ton beau visage de duvet ombragé
Est plus séduisante encore de ligne.
Ta lèvre chante sur le pas de ma porte
Une langue inconnue et charmante
Comme une musique fausse ...
Entre! Et que mon vin te réconforte ...
Mais non, tu passes
Et de mon seuil je te vois t'éloigner
Me faisant un dernier geste avec grâce
Et la hanche légèrement ployée
Par ta démarche féminine et lasse ... |
Your eyes are soft like those of any maiden,
My young stranger,
And the delicate curve
Of your fine features, shadowed with a silk down,
Forms an even more seductive outline.
Your lips form a song at the foot of my doorstep
In a tongue incoherent yet charming,
Rather like music tuned falsely ...
Enter! And let my wine give you refreshment ...
But no ... you pass on,
And from my threshold I watch you depart
As you make a last graceful gesture for me,
With a curved hip casually swaying
From your saunter that's both girlish and languid ... |
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