Le Tombeau de Couperin

Item details

Description +
- Fellow percussionists! For background information about Le tombeau de Couperin, the English Wikipedia article is a good place to start. The following introduction will be limited to discussing the present transcription.
  
  Maurice Ravel created two versions of Le tombeau:
  
  The suite for solo piano (1914-1917), in six movements:
  I. Prélude
  II. Fugue
  III. Forlane
  IV. Rigaudon
  V. Menuet
  VI. Toccata
  
  The Orchestral Suite (1919), in four movements:
  I. Prélude
  II. Forlane
  III. Menuet
  IV. Rigaudon
  
  My transcription should be performed either in the original order of six movements or in the four-movement, re-ordered version.
Instrumentation +
- INSTRUMENTATION
  
  Movement: Player 1: Player 2:
  
  I. Prélude Marimba Marimba
  
  II. Fugue | version Vibraphone Marimba (left hand),
  for 4-oct. vib.
  II. Fugue | version Vibraphone Marimba (left hand),
  for 3-oct. vib. piano (right hand)
  
  III. Forlane | version Vibraphone, Marimba
  for 4-oct. vib. crotale (D#7)
  III. Forlane | version Vibraphone, crotales Marimba
  for 3-oct. vib. (F#6, G6, A#6, B6, D#7)
  
  IV. Rigaudon Marimba, vibraphone Marimba
  
  V. Menuet | version Vibraphone Marimba, glockenspiel
  for 4-oct. vib.
  V. Menuet | version Vibraphone, Marimba, glockenspiel
  for 3-oct. vib. crotales (F#6, G6)
  
  VI. Toccata Marimba, vibraphone. Marimba
  If played on a 3-oct. vibraphone,
  add crotales (F#6, G#6)
About the composer +
- Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and '30s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
  
  Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. He made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.
  
  As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas, and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies or religious works. Many of his works exist in two versions: a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.
  
  Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public. From the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works; others were made under his supervision.
Credits +
- Calligraphy: Christa Puch
  Engraving: Mathias Reumert
  Printed in Copenhagen, Denmark
  Copyright © Edition SVITZER
  www.editionsvitzer.com

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