Tuesday Tones

Continuing our ongoing exploration of classical music inspired by water in some way, we have this short and lovely piece by Maurice Ravel.

It took me longer than I suppose it should have to “discover” Ravel, because my introduction to him was Bolero, and that’s just bad news for anybody. Ravel’s work is so much more wonderfully colorful and pictorial than the dreary Bolero, and that is certainly true of today’s piece, Jeux d’eau. 

This is an early work by Ravel, and it’s sometimes considered one of the very first Impressionist works for solo piano. The title doesn’t translate well to English; literally it’s “Water Games”, but I’m not sure that works. In any event, while I generally try to ascribe specific pictorial descriptive power to music, it’s very hard to listen to Jeux d’eau and not “hear” the light shimmering on the surface of a fountain’s pool or maybe dancing on the splashes of a brook.

Ravel wrote the piece for solo piano, but it did eventually get orchestrated (multiple times, if my brief Googling is to be believed), and so I present both. The piece is only about six minutes long, you’ve got time!