The title of this piece calls for some explanation:  “Alborada,” or morning song, is a particular type of folk song in Spain.  One type of alborada was performed, according to The New Grove Dictionary of Music, “as the first musical offering to a bride on her wedding morning, a custom which still continues.”  Another type is “characterized by unequal groups of bars, [and] is performed by bagpipes and accompanied by a tambourine repeating an invariable rhythm.”

            The gracioso is a theatrical term, signifying a comic actor who, in the words of

pianist-writer Arthur Loesser, “was generally a servant gifted with unusual wit.  He was useful in the furtherance of intrigues, and enlivened proceedings with saucy remarks.”

            Ravel’s composition, then, depicts the way a comic character would perform a traditional Spanish song.  Originally written for piano as part of the cycle Miroirs (1905), Ravel orchestrated it in 1918, having the harps and plucked strings imitate the comedian’s guitar, while the woodwinds, playing the melody, mimic his voice.

            The piece has a slower middle section with a soulful bassoon solo.  It is as if the gracioso had suddenly forgotten his jokes and become sad, perhaps lamenting an unhappy love.  He is still strumming his guitar, but his heart doesn’t seem to be in it.  He soon pulls himself together, though, and continues his alborada with even more fire than before.

Notes by Peter Laki