48 2014 Program Notes, Book 10
Friday, August 15 and Saturday, August 16, 2014
Daphnis et Chloé
(1909-1912)
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Ravel’s
Daphnis and Chloé
is scored for piccolo, two flutes, alto
flute, two oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets,
bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns,
four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion,
two harps, celesta and strings. The performance time is 50
minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed the entire
ballet on July 8, 2005, with Emmanuel Villaume conducting.
The Ballet Russe descended on Paris in 1909 with an impact still reverberating
through the worlds of art, music and dance. Its brilliant impresario, Sergei Diaghilev,
went shopping among the artistic riches of the French capital, and he soon had
gathered together the most glittering array of creative talent ever assembled under
a single banner: Falla, Picasso, Nijinsky, Fokine, Bakst, Monteux, Stravinsky, Massine,
Debussy, Matisse, Prokofiev, Pavlova, Poulenc, Milhaud. Early in 1910 Diaghilev
approached Maurice Ravel with a scenario by Fokine for a ballet based on a pastoral
romance derived from the writings of the 5th-century Greek sophist Longus. In his
1928 autobiographical sketch, Ravel wrote, “I was commissioned by the director of
the Russian Ballet to write
Daphnis et Chloé
, a choreographic symphony in three
movements. My aim in writing it was to compose a vast musical fresco, and to be not so
much careful about archaic details as loyal to my visionary Greece, which is fairly closely
related to the Greece imagined and depicted by Watteau and other French painters
at the end of the 18th century.”
Daphnis
had a lukewarm reception at its premiere at
the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris on June 8, 1912, but Ravel’s score was greeted with
enthusiasm and immediately entered the repertory of the world’s orchestras.
The ballet opens in a meadow bordering a sacred wood on the island of Lesbos.
Greek youths and maidens enter with wreaths and flowers to place at the altar of the
Nymphs as the shepherd Daphnis descends from the hills. His lover, Chloé, crosses
the meadow to meet him. The girls are attracted to the handsome Daphnis and
dance seductively around him, inciting Chloé’s jealousy. Chloé, in her turn, becomes
the object of the men’s advances, most particularly a crude one from the clownish
goatherd Dorcon. Daphnis’ jealousy is now aroused, and he challenges Dorcon to
a dancing contest, the prize to be a kiss from Chloé. Dorcon performs a grotesque
dance and is jeered by the onlookers. Daphnis easily wins Chloé’s kiss with his
graceful performance. The crowd leads Chloé away, leaving Daphnis alone to lapse
into languid ecstasy. Daphnis’ attention is suddenly drawn to the clanging of arms
and shouts of alarm from the woods. Pirates have invaded and set upon the Greeks.
Daphnis rushes off to protect Chloé, but she returns and is captured.
In Scene Two, set on a jagged seacoast, the brigands enter their hideaway laden
with booty. Chloé, hands bound, is led in. She pleads for her release. When the chief
refuses, the sky grows dark and the god Pan, arm extended threateningly, appears
upon the nearby mountains. The frightened pirates flee, leaving Chloé alone.
Scene Three is again set amid the hills and meadows of the ballet’s first scene. It is
sunrise. Herdsmen arrive and tell Daphnis that Chloé has been rescued. She appears
and throws herself into Daphnis’ arms. The old shepherd Lammon explains to them
that Pan has saved Chloé in remembrance of his love for the nymph Syrinx. In gratitude,
Daphnis and Chloé re-enact the ancient tale, in which Syrinx is transformed into a reed
by her sisters to save her from the lustful pursuit of Pan, who then made a flute from that
selfsame reed— the pipes of Pan — upon which to play away his longing. Daphnis and
Chloé embrace tenderly, and join the joyous dance that ends the ballet.
©2014 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
