Talk:Miroirs

Pieces mirroring their dedicatees' personalities?

There is no evidence to suggest that each of the five pieces of Miroirs is supposed to be a reflection of the person to whom it is dedicated. Ravel certainly never said this, and neither Arbie Orenstein nor Roger Nichols -- the chief authorities on Ravel in English -- mention it. The only comment Ravel made about the title Miroirs was as follows: "The word 'mirror' should not lead one to assume that I want to affirm a subjectivist theory of art. A sentence by Shakespeare helped me to formulate a completely opposite position: 'for the eye sees not itself/But by reflection, from some other thing.'" (Julius Caesar, Act I sc.ii)

Leon Paul Fargue, the dedicatee of the first piece, Noctuelles, possibly supplied the inspiration for Ravel in a line of poetry: 'The barn moths take off, in skittering flight, to loop around other beams.' This is the suggestion of Helene Jourdan-Morhange, one of Ravel's closest friends (as was Fargue), in her book Ravel According to Ravel (in conversation with Vlado Perlemuter). It has since been taken up as fact, though I have not found another source other than Morhange. The original French is 'Les noctuelles des hangars partent, d'un vol gauche, Cravater d'autres poutres.' The image of whirling moths is wonderfully caught by Ravel, creating a fine paradox in which the Silence of moths in flight is expressed by the Sound of music. It would be interesting to trace the Fargue poem. Maurice1875 22:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)Maurice1875 08:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Pianist

Who is the pianist playing in the audio examples? It should be mentioned in the article. Karstein (talk) 18:54, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Alborada del gracioso

Gracioso means jester rather than comedian. PiCo (talk) 15:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Capitalisation and translation

To whomever edits this entry: in French capitalisation of titles, the first word (say, an article) and the first noun are capitalised, and any adjectives that come between the first word and the first noun are also capitalised. Therefore, in the work, "Une Barque sur l'ocean," the word "Barque" is indeed capitalised! Also, the principal definition of a barque is that it is not a small boat but rather an ocean-sailing vessel, much like a clipper ship. Simply look at the Wikipedia's entry for "barque"! Also, why would a small boat be on the ocean, anyway?! Please investigate the validity of my claims. Please see the errors in your "corrections." Please don't allow your pride to deceive you! (July 24, 2014) Also, in Roger Nichols's biography on Ravel, you will find that, on February 3rd, 1907, Gabriel Pierne conducted the premiere performance, at the Concerts Colonne, of Ravel's orchestral version of this work. (Ravel had orchestrated it in 1906.) (Also, I hope it goes without saying that no insulting nature is meant here. In fact, I'm actually extremely pleased that someone has indeed gone to the trouble of honouring Maurice Ravel with this entry!) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.51.146.251 (talk) 18:42, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your comments. I've examined Wikipedia's capitalisation rules more closely, and discovered that Wikipedia articles about French works of art generally follow the capitalisation rules that you've laid out, except for classical music articles. This explains why I'd never encountered the capitalisation conventions you'd used because the only France-related articles I frequently edit are in classical music. Therefore I didn't trust your other change to the translation of "barque"; I've changed "small boat" to "boat", because a small boat would be a barquette, I imagine (like it would be in Italian, a language I know a bit about). The French Wikipedia article "barque'" doesn't have an English equivalent, but it seems to be talking about fishing boats, among other things. Re: the comment about Roger Nichols' Ravel biography, if you could provide a page number, then I could add that into the article with a citation. Graham87 06:58, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

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