Greek Melodies & Tripatos.

Maurice Ravel's Five Greek Folk Songs were composed between 1904 and 1906 for the singer Marguerite Babaïan, drawing on melodies gathered from the collections of Hubert Pernot. Modest in scale though they are, these songs occupy an important place in Ravel's development: they stand on the threshold of the period that would produce the Rapsodie espagnole, Ma Mère l'Oye and Daphnis et Chloé. Their economy of means, their modal inflections and the aptness of the accompaniment reveal a composer already able to transform folk material into something unmistakably his own.

Ravel only orchestrated nos. 1 (Le Réveil de la mariée) and 5 (Tout gai !), leaving the three other melodies in their original voice-and-piano form. Manuel Rosenthal's orchestrations of these songs particularly heighten their theatrical and picturesque character. The present orchestrations take a different path: they seek a closer continuity with Ravel's own orchestrations of nos. 1 and 5. They call for the same orchestral forces and, on occasion, evoke certain colours of Ma Mère l'Oye, developed between 1908 and 1912.

Another setting, Tripatos (Sung Dance), based on no. 14 of Hubert Pernot's collection (1903), was also composed for Marguerite Babaïan in 1909 and published posthumously in the special Maurice Ravel issue of La Revue musicale (December 1938). Manuel Cornejo and Maria Diamantopoulou have more recently described it as a "sixth Greek folk song", underlining its close kinship with the Five Greek Folk Songs. In a letter to Marguerite Babaïan dated 8 December 1927, Ravel indicated that he would be willing to orchestrate the piece on his return from a North American tour:

The project, however, never came to fruition.

One may hope that, by bringing together Ravel's Greek settings within a single orchestral framework, Tripatos now finds its rightful place — both as a standalone song and as a natural companion to the cycle.