Valses nobles et sentimentales
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Both Franz Schubert and Maurice Ravel composed Waltzes (Valses) that were characterised as noble and/or sentimental.
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[edit] Schubert
It took a long time after Schubert's death before his piano music was taken seriously: until the early 20th century his vast piano solo production was often criticised for being merely salon music, good for inexperienced girls, but not to be taken too seriously.
Schubert can be partly blamed for that perception problem. In his own day the problem presented itself primarily as financial however: Schubert was continuously low on money, and his multiple endeavours to shoot of lucrative theatre productions had all ended in failure. In those instances he had been successful in getting some of his more serious piano sonatas published, they didn't sell. What did sell, however, were the countless small dance compositions of which his compatriots never grew tired. So, that was what he published, and especially during the last years of his life his friends were successful in convincing Schubert to publish more of these - some of which he had only composed as a diversion at the schubertiades, or to please a friend.
[edit] Valses sentimentales
As Opus 50 the 34 sentimental waltzes for piano were published, composed up to 1823, D. 779.
[edit] Valses nobles
The success was repeated with the publication of 12 noble waltzes, supposedly composed the year before his death (the score is undated), and published as Opus 77 (D. 969).
[edit] Ravel
Ravel was intrigued by the waltz genre: already in 1906 he had started the composition of what later would become La Valse, in which he tried to epitomise everything this popular genre stood for. In 1911, prior to the publication of La Valse, he published the piano version of his suite of eight Valses nobles et sentimentales, not distinguishing between which were the noble and which were the sentimental waltzes. Though highly regarded today, the suite was booed at its first public performance.
The movements are as follows:
- Modéré
- Assez lent
- Modéré
- Assez animé
- Presque lent
- Vif
- Moins vif
- Epilogue: lent
That Ravel wanted to tie up with Schubert is clear. As he said himself:
- The title sufficiently indicates my intention to compose a succession of waltzes, after Schubert's example.
The next year an orchestrated version of the Valses was published, the composer indicating that he wanted to create a "clearer" orchestral sound than had been the case for the preceding Gaspard de la nuit.
The orchestrated ballet version of the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales was named Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs (Adelaide: The Language of Flowers) by Ravel.
