Le Tombeau
de Couperin.

If the glorious year 1912 was that of the Ballet, 1919, after the painful interruption of the Great War¹, may have felt for Ravel like a period of small breadwinning tasks — bringing orchestral colour to scores that until then had lived only in black and white. Alborada del gracioso, now for full orchestra, had been premiered on 17 May by the orchestra of the "Concerts Pasdeloup" under the direction of Rhené-Baton; the same spring he provided orchestral garb to Chabrier's Menuet pompeux for Diaghilev's Ballets russes²; and, carried on by that momentum, he completed in June — according to the autograph date entered after the last bar on the only surviving manuscript³ — the orchestration of four of the six movements of Le Tombeau de Couperin, whose original version for solo piano had just been premiered on 11 April by Marguerite Long⁴. We do not know precisely who or what event triggered and encouraged this change of medium for the tribute to Couperin, and to the comrades fallen on the field of honour, but the task was carried out briskly.

Ravel was certainly counting on the faithful and active Parisian orchestral societies to present his new version swiftly. Given the chronological sequence of these events up to the surviving letter of 21 December 1919⁵, in which the composer asks Rhené-Baton about the scheduled date with the Concerts Pasdeloup, it seems highly plausible that the request came from the French conductor himself, who had recently been appointed the first permanent conductor of the Parisian ensemble, for the regular "popular concerts" given "Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m." at the Cirque d'Hiver, and who could hardly fail to be associated with one of the most prominent composers of the day⁶.

In keeping with the custom of the time, when symphony concerts were as numerous as the various musical societies and the taxis on the grands boulevards, programmes were thrown together hastily, press announcements published very late⁷, and "novelties" were slotted in between the appearances of soloists available at the last minute or flanked by famous scores from the repertoire expected to fill the hall. If we consult the programme booklet of 28 February 1920⁸, piously preserved by the Orchestre Pasdeloup, the classification Suite does not appear⁹. During that matinee, which felt like a historical concert of eighteenth-century works, in which Le Tombeau de Couperin appeared in third position¹⁰, the first six-movement version of April is mentioned; and for those wondering about the disappearance of the Fugue and the Forlane, it is specified: "Since [the premiere of the piano version], the author of Daphnis et Chloé has orchestrated the Prélude, the Forlane, the Menuet and the Rigaudon, without transcribing either the Fugue or the Toccata, whose writing, so marvellously suited to the spirit of the keyboard, would have lost, in an orchestral translation, its characteristic colour." Or commented on later, with parsimony, by Roland-Manuel: "the other pieces having not been judged susceptible to orchestration"¹¹.

The sole surviving orchestral manuscript, held in the Robert O. Lehman Collection at the Morgan Library in New York, consists of a notebook of twenty-six pages, 45 × 35 cm, on paper with forty staves per sheet. In addition to Ravel's fine, elegant black-ink writing — with note heads a millimetre high — the document also bears a few corrections and second thoughts in purple ink or blue pencil. However, there are very few editorial notes or annotations (customary landmarks, staff counts per page for optimisation, an indication on the first page of the identity of the engraver, printer, etc.), with no reference to the Durand firm legally owning the manuscript, nor any mention of a publication number in the publisher's catalogue. Did another manuscript exist, used by the conductor at the premiere and passed to Durand after February 1920 to carry out the engraving work? Unfortunately we have found no trace or mention of such a document.

A subject of debate among performers: this philological study allowed us to note that the metronome markings, identical to those in the first Durand engraving, appear clearly on the first two movements. The Menuet and the final Rigaudon, conversely, carry no such references from the composer¹². Under the guidance of Robinson McClellan, Curator at the Morgan Library, the library's laboratory was also able to conduct a photographic study to reveal underlying layers of writing, making it possible to resolve certain doubts concerning the composer's copying errors¹³.

According to the dates recorded in its plate register, it was in September 1920 that Durand submitted to legal deposit the first engraving of the work (D.&F. 9794 for the orchestral score and 9812 for the separate parts, in a print run of one hundred copies). And it was in September 1923 that the pocket score of the Tombeau was printed (D.&F. 10398), in five hundred units — a more than respectable volume for an initial sales run. Based on the dates found on the various scores of illustrious conductors that we were able to consult¹⁴, a new engraving was produced and printed in April 1944 — with corrections to certain plates — and reprinted in 1947 and 1953. As for the parts, a surprising fact: the Parisian orchestras today no longer own any "historical" copy, even though these were sold up until the Second World War¹⁵. Yet the New York Philharmonic Orchestra¹⁶ still holds, in its abundant archives freely accessible online, one of the rare surviving sets of parts from the very first engraving: parts measuring 33 × 25 cm, with a cover bearing a strange drawing of four framed windows, on which one can observe a number of textual differences clearly present in the Morgan Library manuscript, and which were therefore altered in the 1944 engraving.

The gap between the completion date of the orchestration and its concert premiere logically indicates that the choice of a fully Mozartian orchestra size — without low brass or percussion — was not influenced by the "eighteenth-century" programme arranged by Rhené-Baton and Wanda Landowska, with one notable and striking exception on the closing item: the plethoric… La Mer of Debussy. Thus the presence of a section of six double basses, clearly requested by Ravel on his manuscript — for the sole Musette of the Menuet, a heavy contingent for ultimately very few bars — still gives rise to strong discussion, given the lightened arrangement of timbres and the feasibility of the bass part with three players.

Concerning the string forces, without our knowing what was initially used in 1920, Leonard Bernstein in 1953 presented an almost slimmed-down 10-10-8-8-6¹⁷. Pierre Boulez, on his pocket score acquired — according to the conductor-composer's own handwritten note — in 1946, marked in red ink in the margin a 14-12-10-8-6 — even though, for the magnificent series of concerts he gave with reduced forces alongside the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2003, he returned to a reasonable section of four double basses. To the pressing enigma of the unusual number of cellos in Debussy's maritime sketches, we will now add the question of the presence of this opulent double-bass section, at odds with the miniature-orchestra idea Ravel introduced in this instrumentation treasure. Ravel, saluting Couperin, found for the time of a premiere an ally in matters of forces in the person of the composer who had paid tribute to Rameau in 1905.