Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose Suite)

Composer: RAVEL, Maurice
  • Ma mère l’oye as originally written in 1908-10 as a suite for piano duet. Ravel wrote it for Mimi and Jean Godebski, siblings who were 6 and 7 years old at the time. Their parents, Cyprian and Ida Godebski, were a Paris-based Polish couple who hosted a musical salon in their home.1
    • Ravel loved hanging out with these kids. He made up stories for them and sent them goofy postcards when he was traveling. 
    • Ravel was inspired to write this suite for the Godebski kids when he saw them reading a book of French fairy tales. 

“The idea of evoking the poetry of childhood in these pieces naturally led me to simplify my style and to refine my means of expression.” 

Ravel, on the style of Ma mère l’oye2
  • Ravel’s Ma mère l’oye premiered at the inaugural concert of the Société Musicale Indépendente, an organization founded by Ravel, Fauré and others to perform contemporary works by composers from France and abroad.3
    • The concert took place on April 20, 1910. It also included the premieres of Fauré’s song cycle Le chanson d’Eve, and Debussy’s D’un cahier d’esquiesses (which Ravel performed on piano).4
    • Ravel invited the Godebski children to perform the premiere, but they declined, and instead a different child duo did so: Geneviève Durony and Jeanne Leleu, aged 6 and 7.5

“When you are a great virtuosa and I either an old fogey, covered with honors, or else completely forgotten, you will perhaps have pleasant memories of having given an artist the very rare joy of hearing a work of his, one of a rather special nature, interpreted exactly as it should be.”

Ravel, from a letter to Jeanne Leleu6
  • Ravel orchestrated Ma mère l’oye in 1911, and added more movements, turning the work into a ballet. The ballet premiered in Paris on January 29, 1912.7

Sources

  1. Georg Predota, “Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye Premiered Today in 1910,” Interlude (April 20, 2018), accessed January 2, 2020, https://interlude.hk/ravel-ma-mere-loye-premiered-today-1910/.
  2. Quoted in Ibid.
  3. Barbara L. Kelly, “Ravel, (Joseph) Maurice,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed December 11, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000052145.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Predota, “Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye Premiered Today in 1910,” Interlude.
  6. Quoted in Ibid.
  7. Kelly, “Ravel, (Joseph) Maurice,” Grove Music Online.

Cut IDs

19095