Valses nobles et sentimentales (piano)

The Valses nobles et Sentimentales are suite of waltzes composed by French composer Maurice Ravel. The piano version was published in 1911, and an orchestral version was published in 1912.

Composition and Background

Ravel was intrigued by the waltz genre. By 1906 he had started composing what later would become La Valse, in which he tried to epitomise everything this popular genre encompassed. In 1911, prior to the 1919 publication of La Valse, he published the piano version of his suite of eight Valses nobles et sentimentales. The work was first performed on May 8, 1911 by Louis Aubert, to whom the work is dedicated, at a performance of new works where the composers were not identified. It was not well received.^[1]

The following year an orchestrated version of the Valses was published. This work indicated that the composer wanted to create a "clearer" orchestral sound than had been the case for the preceding Gaspard de la nuit. The orchestrated ballet version of the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales was named Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs (Adelaide: The Language of Flowers) by Ravel.

Structure

That Ravel wanted to identify with Franz Schubert is clear. As he said himself:

The title sufficiently indicates my intention to compose a succession of waltzes, after Schubert's example.^[1]

However, unlike Schubert (who actually wrote separately-grouped noble and sentimental waltzes that, while originally published separately, are frequently published together), Ravel did not differentiate the noble waltzes from the sentimental ones. Other than the name and the waltz form, there is little similarity between Ravel's and Schubert's works.

The waltzes are marked as follows. A typical performance of all of the waltzes takes 15 minutes.

1. Modéré
2. Assez lent
3. Modéré
4. Assez animé
5. Presque lent
6. Vif
7. Moins vif
8. Epilogue: lent

Media

Notes

External links

• Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project.

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