# NEWSFLASH! Ravel's "Mother Goose" performed wrong all these years?



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Musicologists have recently discovered four extra bars in the bassoon part of Ravel's "Mother Goose Suite." So now orchestras all over the world are, for the first time, performing and recording the suite in full! 



> The principal bassoonist at the New York Philharmonic got some good news recently: The bassoon part in Maurice Ravel's "Mother Goose" ballet ("Ma Mère l'Oye"), which will be performed on the orchestra's program for three consecutive evenings beginning Wednesday (and reprised Jan. 4), just grew by four full measures. "She was tickled pink," says Arbie Orenstein, the Queens College musicologist who, while examining the work's original manuscript, came across a musical line that, strangely enough, had never made it into the score that has been performed for the past 100 years.
> 
> The musicologist says that the dropped bassoon line was the largest error he's ever discovered in a Ravel score, though he found numerous other discrepancies between the manuscript and the published score in terms of accent marks, dynamics and tempo changes. He hypothesizes that the slip-up in "Mother Goose," which is actually one of Ravel's simpler scores in terms of harmony and orchestration, was a proofreading lapse on the composer's part. "Ravel always strove for perfection and had great confidence in his publisher's chief proofreader. But at that time in 1911, when he would have been reading the publisher's proofs, he was also working furiously on 'Daphnis et Chloé,' playing parts of that on the piano for Stravinsky and Stravinsky playing parts of his newly finished 'The Rite of Spring' on the piano for Ravel," Mr. Orenstein says.


Read more here.

So, what do you think? :tiphat:


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

i've never heard it, so i'm relieved that when i do the whole bassoon part will be there. whew, what a relief.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

More Ravel, even just four measures, is great news as far as I'm concerned.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Only heard the piano version.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Anyone who hasn't heard the orchestral version owes it to themselves to hear Jean Martinon's fantastic recording.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

violadude said:


> Only heard the piano version.


try Dutoit's version maybe (it's not the ballet version), the orchestration of the third movement is pure Ravel genius:


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

and this version of the last movement...man (again, Dutoit, with the Montreal Symp.Orch.):


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

I really enjoyed reading the article and thank you for posting this. It illustrates what musicologists can do, although one wonders how many scores must be carefully reviewed before finding a transcription error like this.


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## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

Crudblud said:


> More Ravel, even just four measures, is great news as far as I'm concerned.


Not precisely more Ravel, but definitely more bassoon. The cello part is already there, but the composer intended for it to be doubled on bassoon.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Musicologists have recently discovered four extra bars in the bassoon part of Ravel's "Mother Goose Suite." So now orchestras all over the world are, for the first time, performing and recording the suite in full!
> 
> Read more here.
> 
> So, what do you think? :tiphat:


It's an orchestration after the fact of a piece originally written and conceived for four-hand piano. 
I suppose it legitimizes the honorable profession of musicology, though ;-)

No one has their knickers in a twist about that extra bar in the accompaniment of the Bach / Gounod 'Ave Maria.' It sits there, 'uncorrected' after all these years. Maybe a musiclogist could re-write the Gounod to fit the Bach prelude without the incorrect extra measure as Gonoud found and used it in an incorrect edition! The news would be 'just about as "exciting." '


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

So the 4 extra bars are in the 1st mvmt? But where exactly? I'd like to hear that.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

> The musicologist says that the dropped bassoon line was the largest error he's ever discovered in a Ravel score, though he found numerous other discrepancies between the manuscript and the published score in terms of accent marks, dynamics and tempo changes.


I'm slightly concerned by the underlying belief implied by this. There is every reason for the published version to differ from the ms - particularly with such a fastidious composer as Ravel. Even asuming that what was sent to Ravel for proofreading by the publisher was a perfect copy of the ms, it would be inevitable - weeks if not months having passed - that Ravel would want to make changes to accents, dynamics, tempi and much else once he saw his music in cold print. It is unlikely that, if he was busy, he would have gone back and corrected the ms. I hope the "musicologist" wasn't implying that changes made at the proofreading stage should be undone.


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