The Composer and the Magic Spell - A Playlist for Jean Echenoz’ Novel “Ravel”

“Ravel” follows the life of the composer for precisely ten years, from December 28, 1927 until December 28, 1937, the day he died. It is a seismographic observation of the smallest impulses and tremors: The hourlong bath in the claw-foot tub. The preference of the perpetually tired epicure for bloody steaks. The restless corridors of the house in Montfort-l’Amaury, which had the shape of a wedge of Brie cheese - one story facing the street, but three stories facing the garden.

This magical house was filled with all sorts of odds and ends, with “miniatures of all kinds, statuettes and knickknacks, music boxes and windup toys: a wooden Chinaman sticks out his tongue on demand; a sailboat rocks over cardboard waves at your pleasure; a mechanical nightingale the size of a billard ball flaps its wings and sings whenever you like.”

„L’enfant et les sortilèges“ (“The Child and the Magic Spell”) is the name of a short opera by Ravel. “The Composer and the Magic Spell”, this novel could well be called, and it is this very magic spell that lies within all these items: not only in the glass tulips, crystal vials, and porcelain ottomans, but also in the vacuum, phonograph, and telephone; in the Peugeot 201 car, and in the transatlantic steamboat, by which Ravel traveled to America with 60 shirts and 75 ties in his luggage and another separate small suitcase full of Gauloises.

The magic spell of things: A man who becomes art, in order to be able to live, in a world that becomes art, in order to be able to exist.

And yet they must perish, man as well as the world. “But it's the world he's losing, and its objects: dining one evening with his publisher, what does he do but pick up the fork by its tines, realize this right away, and dart a quick look of distress at Marguerite, who is close by.” The signs of sickness and of death become unable to be overlooked.

The playlist, as the novel, is oriented towards Ravel’s last decade of life. He accomplished great works during this time: the second violin sonata, his last work of chamber music, with its’ bluesy middle movement. And the two piano concertos, fraternal twins: one for both hands (Ravel couldn’t play it well himself, with his sloppy technique and small hands), and the other for the left hand alone (the one-armed commissioner of the work, Paul Wittgenstein, drove Ravel to anger by constantly adding in virtuosity!).

All of these works are presented here in recent recordings. In between, in older recordings, there are memories of earlier works - like the Prélude, or the song “Ronsard à son âme“, whose accompaniment Ravel wrote only for the left hand in order to be able to smoke while playing.

In addition, we add music from colleagues that Ravel encountered along his way, like his would-be student Gershwin, the modern composers Edgar Varèse and Georges Auric, and Arthur Honegger, whose “Pacific Express” one can associate with Ravel’s 1927 America tour.

And in Honegger’s motoric work, isn’t he also not far from Bolero? Of course this notorious piece, which according to the novel Ravel himself saw as his masterpiece, can’t be missing: “Eventually, this success will trouble him. That such a pessimistic project would meet with popular acclaim that is soon so universal and long-lasting that the piece becomes one of the world's warhorses - well it's enough to make one wonder but - above all - to go straight to the point.”

(Jean Echenoz: „Ravel“, Les Éditions de Minuit, 2005. Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. The New Press, New York, 2007.)