LDV109

18 RAVEL ∙ THE SOLO PIANO WORKS Does Le Tombeau de Couperin , composed during the Great War, bear the scars of that tragedy, or does it, on the contrary, assemble ‘six imperturbably smiling and serene dances’, as Vladimir Jankélévitch wrote in his book on Ravel? Le Tombeau de Couperin , begun just before the war, pays homage to the eighteenth-century music that Ravel so admired. The dedications of each of its individual movements to a specific soldier killed in action, which were added in 1917 after the pieces were composed, have little or nothing to do with the nature of their music, nor was the war the original inspiration for them. This work cannot be said to be sad, pathetic or tragic. ‘Imperturbably smiling’? No, it’s not that either. The only piece that I can think of that is not smiling is the Fugue : its subject, as if curled in on itself, interrupted by rests, is followed at once by a gentle, cantabile counter-subject, with rounder contours. This dialectic between asceticism and lyricism generates a painful tension. The stark conclusion betrays a sense of immense solitude.