In 1908 Ravel composed a set of four-hand pieces, 'Mother Goose,' of ingenuity, humor, and poetic insight. These pieces have since been orchestrated with incomparable finesse and knowledge of instrumental resource, forming an orchestral suite, and, with the addition of a prelude and various interludes, they have also been transformed into a ballet. In 1908, also, Ravel composed three poems for the piano, Gaspard de la Nuit, on prose fragments by Aloysius Bertrand, which in technical style and contents mark the acme of his achievement in literature for the piano. Ondine and Scarbo, the first and third of these pieces, illustrate their 'programs' with an illuminating poetry that is both brilliant and profound in insight. The second, Le Gibbet, with a persistent pedal note in the right hand over extraordinarily ingenious harmonies, possesses a genuinely sinister and tragic depth.
These poems contrast sharply with Debussy's Images of the same year. The latter are more obviously impressionistic, but Ravel has disposed his uncanny technical equipment with such expressive mastery and such interpretative vitality as to fear no comparison with the older composer. If by contrast the Valse nobles et sentimentales (1910) for piano are agreeable jeux d'esprit, they none the less possess qualities that win our admiration. Frank boldness of style, fantastic irony, and sentimental poetry go hand in hand, united by a grateful piano idiom. The epilogue in particular, with its reminiscences of various waltzes, gives a formal continuity which relieves the set as a whole from any charge of disjointedness.
Ravel's masterpiece is his 'choreographic symphony' Daphnis et Chloé (1906-11), first performed by Diaghilev's Russian Ballet in 1912. In this work Ravel disproves emphatically the possible charge that he is a composer of miniatures, for from the formal aspects it shows continuity and coördination of development in the symphonic manipulation of its motives. Dramatically it is in remarkable accord with the atmosphere, the action and the development of the scenario by the famous ballet-master and author of plots Michel Fokine. The music not only possesses interpretative vitality on a far larger scale than Ravel has ever shown before, but, aside from its astonishing brilliancy and its coloristic poetry, it has a contrapuntal vigor of invention and treatment which are absolutely convincing. From the harmonic standpoint Ravel has attained a new freedom and an elastic suppleness of idiom that is bewildering. His treatment of a large orchestra, augmented by the use of a mixed chorus behind the scenes, is vitally brilliant and marvellously poetic even in the light of his previous achievements. All in all, Daphnis et Chloé is one of the most significant dramatic works of recent years, and can worthily be placed side by side with Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and Dukas' Ariane et Barbe-bleue for its intrinsic merits and historical attributes.
For some years Ravel has been engaged upon a setting of Hauptmann's Versunkene Glocke. It is also announced that he is at work upon a trio, a concerto for piano on Basque themes, and an oratorio, Saint François d'Assise. With his recent successes in mind, these projected works engage a lively expectation.
In conclusion, it must be acknowledged that Ravel cannot, like Debussy, claim to be a pioneer. He was fortunate in being enabled to profit by the swift development of new idioms, to absorb the exuberance of Chabrier, the suave mysticism of Fauré, the illuminating impressionism of Debussy, and the scintillant exoticism of the Neo-Russians. But, while he owes no more to his predecessors than Debussy, he has had the advantage of having matured his style at an age which was relatively in advance of Debussy. It must be recognized that as a whole Ravel's music lies nearer the surface of the human heart than Debussy's. It is not usual to find that depth of poetry or of human sentiment which distinguishes so considerable a portion of Debussy's music. Ravel, on the other hand, is more expansive in his scope; he captivates us with his humor, his irony, his dappling brilliancy, and with an almost metallic grasp in execution of a pre-conceived plan. His harmonic transformations exert a literal fascination, though their technical facility obscures their purpose, but underneath there is seldom an inner deficiency of sentiment. If his impressionism is tinged with quasi-realistic effects, there is no lack of genuine homogeneity of style. In fact, his skillful blending of the two tendencies is one of the chief features of his originality. In such works as the Pavane, the first movement of the String Quartet, in Asie from Shéhérazade, in La Vallée des Cloches, in Ondine and Le Gibbet, and in many episodes of Daphnis et Chloé Ravel offers a convincingly human sentiment which only emphasizes his essential versatility of expression. For in his characteristic vein of ironic brilliance and fantastic subtlety he carries all before him.
III
If the work of Bruneau and Charpentier does not follow in historic or chronological sequence that of Debussy and Ravel, their juxtaposition is defensible since the former in common with the latter have received their individual stimulus from sources extraneous to music. In the case of Bruneau the vitalizing motive is the literary realism of Émile Zola; in that of Charpentier the direct inspiration comes from socialism or at least a socialistic outlook.
Louis-Charles-Bonaventure-Alfred Bruneau was born in Paris, on March 1, 1857. His father played the violin, his mother was a painter, thus an æsthetic environment favored his artistic development. Alfred Bruneau entered the Paris Conservatory at the age of sixteen; three years later he was awarded the first prize for violoncello playing. He studied harmony for three years in Savard's class, became a pupil of Massenet and was the first to win the second prix de Rome in 1881 with a cantata Geneviève. For some years previously Bruneau had been a member of Pasdeloup's orchestra, and in 1884 an Overture héroïque (1885) was played by this organization. Other orchestral works—La Belle au bois dormant (1884) and Penthesilée (a symphonic poem with chorus, 1888)—belong to this period.
Despite some fifty songs, choruses, a Requiem, and some pieces for various wind instruments and piano, Bruneau is essentially a dramatic composer, and it is chiefly as such that he deserves consideration. His first dramatic work, Kérim, the text by Millet and Lavedan (1886), is an unpretentious opera of eminently lyric vein, in which a facile orientalism plays a prominent part. It displays the technical fluidity which might be expected of a pupil of Massenet, and possesses a slight, though palpable, individuality. A ballet, Les Bacchantes (1887), not published until 1912 and recently performed, is in the old style of detached pieces without continuous music. Here Bruneau has been successful in dramatic characterization, but the music is again largely a reflection of Massenet.
It was not until 1891 that Bruneau gave evidence of his characteristic style and individual dramatic method which he has since pursued steadily. French musicians had awakened to the permanent significance of Wagner's dramatic principles, and it is not surprising, therefore, to find that Bruneau accepted these in slight degree. His Wagnerian obligations are virtually limited to an attempt to unite music and text as intimately as possible, to employ leading-motives as symbols of persons or ideas, and to avoid formal melody in the voice parts except at essentially lyric moments. His development of motives, while to a certain extent symphonic, is in fact markedly different from that of Wagner, and his recitatives depart from the traditional accompanied recitatives in that they employ as nearly as possible the inflections of natural speech over single chords.