Sonic Asymmetry

Maurice Ravel: “Pavane pour une enfante défunte”

モーリス・ラヴェル：「死んだ子供のためのパヴァネ」

TIME COMMITMENT: 7 minutes

Nostalgic, artful and deceptively brittle, this poem nebulously envelops theme-less daydreams with pastel mirages and insistent rêveries.  But the forlorn bouquet offered by the brooding, patient orchestra is not laid on a funeral stone.  Rather, the composition was prompted by Velazquez’s canvas that still haunts us in one of El Prado’s most celebrated halls.

MUSIC

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane_pour_une_infante_d%C3%A9funte

A REFLECTION

No worst, there is none.  Pitched past pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief

Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —

Then lull, then leave off.  Fury had shrieked ‘No lingering!

Let me be fell: force I must be brief.

Gerald Manley Hopkins: ”No worst, there is none.  Pitched past pitch of grief”