Uploaded July 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Composer: Joseph Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937)
PF: Midi (Yamaha C5 and Dark Chateau Grand)
Frontispiece was composed in Saint-Cloud in June 1918. Ravel's score is written in a very singular and unique way, for five hands on two pianos. The piece is intended as a musical indicative for a poem by Ricciotto Canudo entitled "SP 503, the poem of Vardar"
The work was published in manuscript form for the first time in 1919 in the journal Feuillets d'art, then by Canudo in the first issue of the Gazette des sept arts in 1922, then finally in the hardcover edition of "the Vardar Poem" in 1923.
The first known public hearing took place at the home of Mrs. Paul Clemenceau around June 19, 1921, in the presence of Paul Painlevé and Jean Marnold, in an interpretation by the pianists Mieczysław Horszowski, M. de Levitza and Hélène Kahn-Casella.
The musicologist François-René Tranchefort notes that with its fifteen bars, Frontispiece is Ravel's shortest work. Here is a quote by Marcel Marnat:
“Less than two resolutely polytonal minutes with three independent melodic lines superimposed, soon flouted by the intervention of the inclement chords introduced by the fifth hand. The language here is as new as possible. Three final chords add to the climax the listener's surprise by a brutal questioning leading to a void. "
The work is also particular in its superposition of two different rhythmic indications: ternary, at 15/8 for piano 1, and binary, 5/4, for the piano 2.
The average performance of the piece is approximately two minutes. The piece bears the number O 70 in the catalog of the composer's works established by Marnat.
The piece was found very interesting by Pierre Boulez, who produced an instrumentation for a small ensemble in 1987, then a version for orchestra in 2007, dedicated to the memory of François Lesure.
Wikipedia Français (translated by me with some help by Google Translate)
Composer: Joseph Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937)
PF: Midi (Yamaha C5 and Dark Chateau Grand)
Frontispiece was composed in Saint-Cloud in June 1918. Ravel's score is written in a very singular and unique way, for five hands on two pianos. The piece is intended as a musical indicative for a poem by Ricciotto Canudo entitled "SP 503, the poem of Vardar"
The work was published in manuscript form for the first time in 1919 in the journal Feuillets d'art, then by Canudo in the first issue of the Gazette des sept arts in 1922, then finally in the hardcover edition of "the Vardar Poem" in 1923.
The first known public hearing took place at the home of Mrs. Paul Clemenceau around June 19, 1921, in the presence of Paul Painlevé and Jean Marnold, in an interpretation by the pianists Mieczysław Horszowski, M. de Levitza and Hélène Kahn-Casella.
The musicologist François-René Tranchefort notes that with its fifteen bars, Frontispiece is Ravel's shortest work. Here is a quote by Marcel Marnat:
“Less than two resolutely polytonal minutes with three independent melodic lines superimposed, soon flouted by the intervention of the inclement chords introduced by the fifth hand. The language here is as new as possible. Three final chords add to the climax the listener's surprise by a brutal questioning leading to a void. "
The work is also particular in its superposition of two different rhythmic indications: ternary, at 15/8 for piano 1, and binary, 5/4, for the piano 2.
The average performance of the piece is approximately two minutes. The piece bears the number O 70 in the catalog of the composer's works established by Marnat.
The piece was found very interesting by Pierre Boulez, who produced an instrumentation for a small ensemble in 1987, then a version for orchestra in 2007, dedicated to the memory of François Lesure.
Wikipedia Français (translated by me with some help by Google Translate)
