Toward the end of the 19th century, many composers in France sought to create uniquely French music aimed at countering Richard Wagner’s all-pervasive influence. In the ensuing decades, however, this impulse took a sinister turn. As musicologist Jane Fulcher observed, the insistence on a French style and a renewed interest in the past gradually became linked with World War I propaganda. At a time when France was deeply divided both politically and culturally, the idea of creating a “unified core of national beliefs” through art was appealing to many. To further this agenda, Republican nationalists turned to older models of state power, such as the “Golden Age” of Louis XIV and the classical notions of purity, proportion, and order.
Along with defining “French” music came a call to banish “dangerous influences,” giving rise to right-wing projects like the “Ligue pour la Defense de la Musique Française.” Although such rhetoric intensified postwar, not everyone succumbed to the fervor. Maurice Ravel remained an outspoken critic of this xenophobic approach to art throughout his lifetime. Not only did he compose many works with distinctly foreign characteristics, including the Melodies hebraïques (1920), but he also explicitly refused to participate in the “Ligue pour la Defense.” As Ravel explained,
It would be dangerous for composers systematically to ignore the productions of their foreign colleagues and thus to form a sort of national coterie: our musical art, so rich in the present epoch, would not delay to become enclosed in its [own] clichés…I hope, nevertheless, to act as a Frenchman and count myself among those who want to serve.
Although Ravel remained steadfastly against nationalist music, Le Tombeau de Couperin seems at first glance to be a blatant example of this brand of neoclassicism. Begun as a keyboard suite in 1914, the work was finally completed in 1917, with each of its six movements dedicated to friends who had died in combat. Ravel arranged four of the movements for orchestra in 1919, and it is in this form that the work remains the most popular. At first glance, Le Tombeau de Couperin seems like a general homage to 18th-century French music. It memorializes François Couperin, an important musician (and music teacher to the king’s children) at the court of Louis XIV. And it draws heavily upon Baroque dance forms, rhythms, and melodic gestures.
Considering Ravel’s opposition to nationalist music, other interpretations come into play, particularly how the composer intermingles wartime propaganda and the tragic reality of combat. While many in France viewed WWI as a victory, others, including Ravel, saw the war as tragic and bloody. For example, when nominated for the Legion d’honneur in 1920, Ravel refused the award, proclaiming that “a red ribbon would not bleed on his [Ravel’s] buttonhole.” With its discordant dedications to Couperin and Ravel’s fallen friends, Le Tombeau de Couperin undercuts the notion of an “idealized France” that neoclassicism purported to offer. Ravel once commented, “No, the ‘Marseillaise’ doesn’t figure into it.”
First performed on February 28, 1920, the orchestral version of Le Tombeau de Couperin includes four of the original six movements. In the opening prelude, running sixteenth notes recall Baroque keyboard music's “perpetual motion” quality while subtly shifting harmonies and meters are quintessentially modern. Originally an Italian dance called the furlana, the Forlane became fashionable in the French court at the end of the seventeenth century. In Ravel’s version, the pungent chromaticism of the recurring motive that opens the movement provides a striking counterpoint to the lilting dotted rhythms. Although Ravel’s arrangement omits the references to his friends, the Forlane was dedicated initially to Lieutenant Gabriel De Luc. The dance form is slightly less audible in the third movement, which draws upon the minuet’s stately tempo, grace, and elegance. (The minuet bore a dedication to Jean Dreyfus, whose parents Ravel was staying with when he completed Le Tombeau.) In memory of Ravel’s childhood friends Pierre and Pascal Gaudin, the lively Rigaudon takes the work to a deceptively cheery close.
