- Ravel composed this piece in 19241 and it was published the same year.2 Originally for violin and piano, Ravel also created versions for violin and orchestra and for violin and luthéal3 (a short-lived variety of piano with register stops like an organ).
- This piece premiered at Aeolian Hall in London on April 4, 1924. The soloist was also the work’s dedicatee, Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Aranyi. Henri Gil-Marchex played the piano.4
- Jelly d’Aranyi often worked with her fellow Hungarian Béla Bartók. In fact, though the title translates to “gypsy,” it would be more accurate to think of this piece as Ravel’s interaction with Hungarian style. (This is not the first time that Hungarian music and “gypsy” music seemed interchangeable in classical titles – cf. Brahms’s Hungarian Dances.)5
- “Tzigane” is derived from generic European term for gypsy.
Sources
- Barbara L. Kelly, “Ravel, (Joseph) Maurice,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed January 14, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000052145.
- “Tzigane (Ravel, Maurice),” IMSLP, accessed January 14, 2022, https://imslp.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel%2C_Maurice).
- Kelly, “Ravel, (Joseph) Maurice,” Grove Music Online
- “Tzigane (Ravel, Maurice),” IMSLP.
- Mark DeVoto, “Harmony in the Chamber Music,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, ed. Deborah Mawer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 112.
Cut IDs
21037 21704 22364 40499