Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Autograph musical quotation signed ('Maurice Ravel') from the Chansons madécasses, [after 1925]
Autograph quotation from this languorous evocation of a Madagascan afternoon.

Six bars on two staves for flute and cello, autograph title 'Chansons madécasses', one page, 100 x 287mm, cut down from a larger leaf.

Provenance:
(1) Sotheby's, 28 May 2015, lot 284.

(2) Schøyen Collection, MS 5551.

The quotation comprises the opening of the third song of the Chansons madécasses [Madegascan songs], which sets the words 'Il est doux de se coucher, durant la chaleur, sous un arbre touffu, et d'attendre que le vent du soir amène la fraîcheur' [It is sweet to lie in the heat beneath a leafy tree, and wait for the coolness of the evening wind].

A commission by the American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the Chansons madécasses of 1925-26 for soprano, flute, cello and piano mark a departure from Ravel's earlier style in their exotic and erotic subject matter and their employment of innovative instrumental textures – as here with the harmonics in the cello part. The texts are from the collection of the same name by Evariste de Parny (1753-1814), which are considered the first prose poems in French.