Introduction

This chapter analyzes two songs from Histoires naturelles (“Le paon” and “Le cygne”), focusing on the music, text, and musico-poetic associations. Histoires naturelles (1906), composed to poems by Jules Renard, provides a particularly interesting subject for an analysis of text-music relationships. Ravel's own comments shed light on both his views of Renard's poems and his ideals of text-music associations at the time of the cycle's composition. Of the poems Ravel said that “the direct, clear language and the profound, hidden poetry of Jules Renard's works tempted me for a long time.” According to Renard's journal, Ravel said that he had taken the poet's words as a direct starting point when composing the song cycle:

The analyses of this chapter shed light on how Ravel set this “profound, hidden poetry” in two songs from Histoires naturelles—intending not, in his own words, “to add anything,” but “only to interpret” the poems.