More Ravel fun

About the Histoires naturelles: 'This set of five songs marks an important step in Ravel's evolution, as significant as those of Jeux d'eau and Miroirs. It was not just that he pushed to extremes his concern with spoken language, even though this was far from incidental to the overall effect; rather than in this work he, now accepted as a composer of outstanding gifts, openly questioned the barrier set up in France between 'popular' and 'serious' music. [...] 'Pierre Lalo felt strongly: "The Histoires naturelles are rather in the style of café concert, café concert with ninths; but I would almost be tempted to prefer café concert all by itself." Note the 'almost': the respectable critic of Le temps could hardly admit to unalloyed pleasure from such a source. The verbal fisticuffs between Lalo and Ravel provoked by this article were protracted and acrimonious.'

[...] 'Turning to the music, we can without difficulty find chapter and verse to support the hostility shared by the more conservative members of the Société nationale audience. In 'le paon', the peacock preens himself in expectation of his marriage, and Ravel builds to a climax that disappears in a cloud of dust: 'la fiancée n'arrive pas.' The disillusionment of the peacock is all the more brutal because Ravel has compressed the eight syllables that the 'serious' tradition demanded - 'la fian-ce-e n'ar-ri-ve pas' - into six - la fiance-ce(e) n'ar-riv(e) pas' - in the manner of colloquial French speech.' [...] 'It's also possible that in setting the peacock's discordant cry of 'Leon! Leon!' Ravel may have gleefully seized the chance to refer to Paul Leon, the director of the Academie des Beaux-Arts which had so recently and controversially removed the composer from the final round of the Prix de Rome.' [...] 'The ensuing furore has often been referred to as a second affaire Ravel, and although it had none of the practical consequences of the first, it marked even more clearly Ravel's determination to be himself. Strangely, Debussy was shocked by what he deemed an abrogation of artistic responsibility and referred to Ravel's writing as 'factitious Americanism.' Ravel's fellow-pupil Louis Aubert remembered many years later that even Faure had reacted indignantly: 'I'm very fond of Ravel. But I'm not happy with people setting stuff like that to music.' However, the vocal style at least of Histoire Naturelles was Ravel's own: "Ravel's friends were interested and amused to find in them the habitual inflections of the author reproduced with an amazing fidelity... When he delivered himself of one of those perfectly fashioned ideas which were his specialty, he would make a very characteristic gesture: slipping the back of his right hand quickly behind him, he would do a sort of ironical pirouette, lower his eyelids to conceal the malicious twinkle and end his little speech abruptly with a falling fourth or fifth."