Valses nobles et sentimentales

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article does not cite any references or sources. (December 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
Image:Split-arrows.svg
  It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. (Discuss)

Both Franz Schubert and Maurice Ravel composed noble and sentimental Waltzes (Valses).

Contents

[edit] Schubert

Schubert's piano music was slow in taking its place in the standard repertoire of piano literature. Until the early 20th century his vast piano solo production was often criticized for being salon music; good for inexperienced girls, but not to be taken too seriously.

Schubert can partly be blamed for that perception problem. In his own day the problem presented itself primarily as financial, however Schubert was continuously low on money, and his multiple endeavors to create lucrative theater productions had all ended in failure. In those instances he had been successful in getting some of his more serious piano sonatas published, however they didn't sell. What did sell, were the countless small dance compositions which never tired his compatriots. Especially during the last years of his life his friends were successful in convincing Schubert to publish more of these - some of which he had only composed as a diversion at the schubertiades, or to please friends.

[edit] Valses sentimentales

As Opus 50, the 34 sentimental waltzes for piano were published, composed up to 1823, D. 779.

[edit] Valses nobles

The success was repeated with the publication of 12 noble waltzes, supposedly composed the year before his death (the score is undated), and published as Opus 77 (D. 969).

[edit] Ravel

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 publication of La Valse, he published the piano version of his suite of eight Valses nobles et sentimentales - without distinguishing the noble from the sentimental waltzes. Though highly regarded today, the suite was booed at its first public performance.

The movements are as follows:

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

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

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

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.