DESCRIPTION:
Maurice Ravel - "Le Gibet," from Gaspard de la nuit, 1908-1909.

Performed by Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

Gaspard de la nuit is a three-"poem" suite, each work based on a poem by Aloysius Bertrand. This piece, "Le Gibet," is a haunting portrait of desolation and misery. The piece, with the atmosphere maintained by a tolling B-flat, is written to describe the monotony and despair that is described in the poem. The difficulty of this piece is imbued in the subtle dynamic and textual differences that meld around the repeating B-flat.

Ah! Could what I hear be the yelping of the cold night wind, or the hanged man giving forth a sigh on the gallows fork?
Could it be some cricket singing, crouched in the moss and the sterile ivy that the forest wears out of pity?
Could it be some fly on the hunt, blowing its horn around those ears deaf to the fanfare of tally-hos?
Could it be some beetle plucking, in its uneven flight a bloody hair from its bald skull?
Or could it be some spider embroidering a half yard of muslin as a tie for that strangled neck?
It is the bell tolling to the walls of a city under the horizon, and the carcass of a hanged man reddened by the setting sun.