And
so we find the tender poet of the "Sonatine" and the string-quartet and
"Miroirs" writing the witty and mordant music of "L'Heure espagnol";
setting the bitter little "Histoires naturelles" of Jules Renard for
chant, writing in "Valses nobles et sentimentales" a slightly ironical
and disillusioned if smiling and graceful and delicate commentary to the
season of love, projecting a music-drama on the subject of Don Quixote.
Over his waltzes Ravel maliciously sets a quotation from Henri de
Regnier: "Le plaisir delicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation
inutile." With Casella, he writes a musical "A la maniere de," parodying
Wagner, d'Indy, Chabrier, Strauss and others most wittily. Something of
Eric Satie, the clown of music, exists in him, too. And probably nothing
makes him so inexplicable and irritating to his audiences as his ironic
streak. People are willing to forgive an artist all, save only irony.
What the future holds for Maurice Ravel is known only to the three
norns. But, unless some unforeseen accident occur and interrupt his
career, it can only hold the most brilliant rewards. The man seems
surely bound for splendid shores. He is only in the forty-fifth year of
his life, and though his genius was already fresh and subtle in the
Quartet, written as early as 1903, it has grown beautifully in power
during the last two decades.
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