Farytale Magic

A jewel of the unaccompanied choral repertoire for me is the “Trois Chansons” by Maurice Ravel: anyone who has sung these will recall a bright, magical sound, and perhaps memories of being tongue-tied. Ravel, who wrote both text and music, tells three stories with lightness and humor, musically in the style of Renaissance compositions, with content drawing on fairy-tale motifs.

In the first chanson there is Nicolette (almost a sister of Little Red Riding Hood), a girl who does not allow herself to be seduced by the wolf, but who turns away with a heavy heart from a handsome young man to run into the arms of an ugly old man, her eyes single-mindedly on golden riches. Ravel depicts musically the carefree walking of the girl, her sighing parting from the young man, and the gasping entry of the old man (portrayed vocally by suspensions in the bass line).

The second chanson is a magically lyrical dialog of a girl with three birds of paradise, which bring her the news of the death (in war) of her lover. The solo voices are accompanied by the humming choir, like a string accompaniment. Only in this central piece are the dim shadows of the time of composition noticeable. Ravel composed the “Trois Chansons” just a few months after the outbreak of the First World War.

In the third song, a round (“Ronde”), all conceivable fantastical and grotesque characters of the forest of Ormonde appear, for which Ravel had his friends list all possible forest creatures: for choral singers, it is a tongue-twisting challenge (“diables, diablots, diablotins, des chèvre-pieds, des gnomes, des démons, des loups-garous, des elfes, des myrmidons, …”)!

Ravel’s friend Tristan Klingsor (to whom the first song is dedicated) said of the composition: “Ravel has given the purest of his heart in these chansons. … The great wizard of orchestration has the naturalness of a big child.” The fairy-tale pieces captivate performers and audiences alike. They can be combined extremely well with Debussy’s “Trois Chansons de Charles Orléans” which are stylistically similar.