Shéhérazade
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

THE STORY

     Maurice Ravel’s song cycle Shéhérazade uses text from three poems that were inspired by the better-known musical work of the same name, Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral tone poem Scheherazade. The poetry, by Tristan Klingsor, does not directly deal with the tales of the One Thousand and One Nights, yet Ravel aims to evoke the East in his music—a place that had captured his imagination since childhood.
     “Asie” (“Asia”) uses a scale pattern with a flatted second, a sonority commonly associated with the East, as the narrator fantasizes about the “exoticism” of Asia. In “La Flûte enchantée” (“The Enchanted Flute”), the narrator is an enslaved girl who hears her lover playing his flute outside. The singer delivers a static chant, seemingly under a spell, as the flute weaves around her vocal line. In “L’Indifférent" (“The Indifferent One”), the narrator, presumably an older woman, tries to persuade a boy to come into her house and enjoy some wine with her; note the pleading drop in her voice as she invites the boy to enter. 

The text and translation for this work are available in the printed program at the concert hall or in the printable program online.

INSTRUMENTATION

Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, celesta, strings