(Caution - about Temperaments) Tuning for Jeux d'eau by Ravel.

[Jason Kanter]

Hey, Paul - how about a recording? /jason 

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf
Of paul bailey
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2006 8:12 AM
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Subject: (Caution - about Temperaments) Tuning for Jeux d'eau by Ravel. 

Tuning for Jeux d'eau by Ravel.


......"Written on the manuscript by Ravel, and often included on published
editions, is "Dieu fluvial riant de l'eau qui le chatouille... / Henri de
Régnier" which in English editions is translated to "River god laughing as
the water tickles him..."; this quote is from Régnier's Fête d'eau as a note
that the piece is to be 
played lightly."   (from Wikipedia)

I think it conveys a great deal more than 'to be played lightly'  
(though that is certainly correct!).

This is practically direct orders to play it in a meantone tuning. The
tickling is perfectly expressed in the E major seventh chord, which
immediately provokes the laughter, an A major seventh chord. The laugh
arpeggio's note speed doubles.  A major is the sub-dominant of E: in sharps
keys the sub dominant is a step back down the energy-excitement scale, so
the tickling of the E seventh is acting on the A. The objective in tickling
is to provoke a higher energy state in the one being tickled, and a burst of
laughter; which  'vibrates' faster than the act of the tickling.  E major
has another quality of tickling; the G#-Eb  diminished sixth, which is the
secret special energy source in the E major seventh that provokes the
thirty-second note outburst in the A major arpeggio. (Think of G#-D# as a
fifth that is 15 cents wide, and tremolos like a third, it's character
changing in the different registers just as a wide third changes.)

Well, I do have a little 'story' about what pictures and sounds this tone
poem is portraying, I'm reluctant to try to tell the whole story in words,
if only because the picture-sound story is always changing; the better I
play the piece, the clearer the voices are, the more I can hear them say.
The sounds of the music evoke images of fountains and cascades and pools
that produce those sounds.

I will say this: the piece needs to start in E major to have the variety and
contrasts required for the story.  E major is at one extreme of the eight
'Major Thirds keys and so there are ample resources both 'up' the energy
scale, and also 'down' the energy scale. 
And the 'up' harmonic modulation immediately leads to the quasi-diminished
fourth keys.  ( The Major thirds keys are  C, G, D, A, and E; and F, Bb and
Eb. The diminished fourths keys are B, C#, F#,
G#.)  So there are contrasts of Mode, which are great enough to express the
extremes of emotion and physical sensation, and the contrast between air and
water. Example; ever see somebody laughing so hard it's really not clear
whether they're laughing or crying?  Tickling can be everything from
friendly to provocative to cruel.

The last, biggest cascade falls into a pool, carrying air with the water
deep Deep DEEP and then the air explodes upward into foam, and the wavelets
spread out in larger circles as the energy subsides. F# Major (a diminished
fourth key) and C Major (the purest Major third key) can't get away from
each other - it's a 'resolution' that doesn't resolve at all, except as the
two extremes work it out; but they never quite do work it out. Notice this
is the only section in the piece where an 'odd' number of rhythmic impulses
defines a section: the rising and falling patterns of arpeggios in this long
unmeasured gesture happen 43 times. The sounds of F# and C are essential to
this - perhaps F# being the 'air' and C being the 'water'. The F#-A#
diminished fourth is pretty wide (about twice as wide as an 'ET' third) -
which gives it a great variety of expressions in the different registers of
the keyboard. In the lowest bass it's tremolo slow but insistent; an octave
higher it has a pleasing vocal vibrato effect, another octave and it becomes
irritating, above that it becomes like a siren. But C major it pure, that
purity is much more the same in all registers.  What better to express the
difference between air and water?


The last eight bars sound like the brook disappearing into the distance. The
tickling fades away, and the last we hear is the E-B fifth (a quiet fifth,
nearly pure) in the bass, and the G#-D#(Eb)  wolf fifth in octave 6-7, where
it's tickling characteristic has passed out of view, So we have relief from
the tickling that started it all in the beginning, but it's still there.....

Paul Bailey


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