Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole: Color, Atmosphere, and Dance

Maurice Ravel, the quintessential French musical impressionist, was the son of a Swiss engineer-inventor father and a mother of Basque-Spanish heritage.

The Basque influence can be heard throughout Ravel’s music. Nowhere is it more vibrantly on display than in Rapsodie espagnole, completed in 1908. Manuel de Falla praised the four-movement orchestral suite as “surprising one by its Spanish character, achieved through the free use of the modal rhythms and melodies and ornamental figures of our ‘popular’ music.” This was Ravel’s first published work written specifically for orchestra, although the Habanera movement was composed twelve years earlier in 1896, and originally scored for two pianos.

The first movement, Prélude à la nuit (“Prelude to the Night”) is shadowy, suspenseful, and atmospheric. It begins with a pale four-note descending line (F, E, D, C-sharp) which emerges as a veiled specter and remains a persistent, haunting presence through the entire movement. Amid the stillness, we can feel the sultry night air. Mournful siren calls ring out in the clarinets, and a few moments later are answered by the bassoons.

The Malagueña is a flamenco dance from the Andalusia region on Spain’s southern Mediterranean coast. Ravel’s movement is dreamy and fleeting. It is a dance of shimmering orchestral voices. Swirling exuberantly, the dance spins out of control and reaches a crashing climax. The English horn’s sensuous, wistful statement returns us to the stillness of the night, with a return of the descending line from the previous movement.

The Habanera, popularized by Bizet’s 1875 opera, Carmen, is an Afro-Cuban dance, named after the Cuban capital. Again, the atmosphere is dreamy and atmospheric. The composer provides the marking, assez lent et d’un rythme las (“rather slow and with a drowsy rhythm”). The music so closely resembles Debussy’s 1903 Soirée dans Grenade that Ravel noted the date of his original 1896 composition.

All of the Suite’s pent-up energy is released spectacularly in the final movement, Feria (“Festival”). It is a dazzling explosion of orchestral color and giddy motion in 6/8 time. A new mysterious nocturnal landscape emerges in the middle section. The descending motif from the first movement returns, shrouded in ghostly harmonic glissandi. Simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying, the movement concludes with the boisterous frivolity of a Spanish carnival.

This 2021 recording features Robert Trevino and the Basque National Orchestra:

I. Prélude à la nuit:

II. Malagueña:

III. Habanera:

IV. Feria:

Five Great Recordings

• Ravel: Rapsodie espagnole, M. 54, Robert Trevino, Basque National Orchestra Amazon
• Charles Dutoit and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
• Jesús López Cobos and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
• Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
• Carlos Miguel Prieto and Minnesota Orchestra (concert from February 3, 2023)

Featured Image: “Spanish Still Life. Seville II” (1911), Henri Matisse