Note: "Tzigane" also means "Gypsy": see Gypsy (disambiguation)

Gypsy (disambiguation)

-Ethnic groups:* Romani people, a group widely dispersed throughout Europe* Dom people, an Indo-Aryan group** Lyuli, a Dom subgroup from Central Asia* Lom people, a group from East Anatolia and Armenia* Banjara, a group from India* Irish Travellers...

.

Tzigane is a rhapsodic

Rhapsody (music)

A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations...

 composition by the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 composer Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

. It was commissioned by and dedicated to Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Arányi

Jelly d'Arányi

Jelly d'Aranyi, fully Jelly Aranyi de Hunyadvár was a Hungarian violinist who made her home in London.She born in Budapest, the grand-niece of Joseph Joachim, and sister of the violinist Adila Fachiri. She began her studies as a pianist, but switched to violin at the Music Academy in Budapest...

, great-niece of the influential violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...

. The original instrumentation was for violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

 and piano (with optional luthéal

Luthéal

The luthéal is a kind of prepared piano which extended the "register" possibilities of a piano by producing cimbalon-like sounds in some registers, exploiting harmonics of the strings when pulling other register-stops, and also some registers making other objects, which were lowered just above the...

 attachment). The first performance took place in London on April 26, 1924 with the dedicatee on violin and with Henri Gil-Marchex at the piano (with luthéal).

The luthéal was, in Ravel's day, a new piano attachment (first patented in 1919) with several tone-colour registrations

Registration (organ)

Registration is the technique of choosing and combining the stops of a pipe organ in order to produce a particular sound. Registration can also refer to a particular combination of stops...

 which could be engaged by pulling stops above the keyboard. One of these registrations had a cimbalom-like sound, which fitted well with the gypsy-esque idea of the composition. The original score of Tzigane included instructions for these register-changes during execution. The luthéal, however, did not achieve permanence. By the end of the 20th century the first print of the accompaniment with luthéal was still available at the publishers, but by that time the attachment had long since disappeared from use. In this sense Tzigane is comparable to Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

's Arpeggione Sonata

Arpeggione Sonata

The Sonata in A minor for Arpeggione and Piano, D. 821, was written by Franz Schubert in Vienna in November 1824. The sonata is the only substantial composition for the arpeggione which remains extant today...

: that piece was also written in order to promote an uncommon instrument, and when the composition proved more popular than the instrument a few years later, execution shifted to a more common instrument (cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

 in Schubert's case).

Ravel soon orchestrated

Orchestration

Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...

 the composition, and this version was first performed on November 30, 1924 in Paris with the Concerts Colonne

Concerts Colonne

The Colonne Orchestra is a French symphony orchestra, founded in 1873 by the violinist and conductor Édouard Colonne.-History:While leader of the Opéra de Paris orchestra, Édouard Colonne was engaged by the publisher Georges Hartmann to lead a series of popular concerts which he founded under the...

 under the direction of Gabriel Pierné

Gabriel Pierné

Henri Constant Gabriel Pierné was a French composer, conductor, and organist.-Biography:Gabriel Pierné was born in Metz in 1863. His family moved to Paris to escape the Franco-Prussian War. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, gaining first prizes for solfège, piano, organ, counterpoint and fugue...

. The first performance of the version with piano was by Robert Soetens

Robert Soetens

Robert Soetens was a French violinist, remembered particularly for premiering the Violin Concerto No. 2 of Sergei Prokofiev in 1935.-Biography:...

 in 1925.

The name of the piece is derived from the generic Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an term for "gypsy" (in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

: gitan, tsigane or tzigane rather than the Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

 cigány) although it does not use any authentic Gypsy melodies. Note that in Ravel's days in Paris gypsy/gitan/tsigane/tzigane did not so much refer to the Roma (Gypsy) people in any strict sense: the "gypsy" style of the work was rather a kind of popular musical exoticism, comparable to the Spanish exoticism in Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's day (compare Emmanuel Chabrier

Emmanuel Chabrier

Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas , songs, and piano music as well...

's España), or the Janissary

Janissary

The Janissaries were infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguards...

exoticism in Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

's day (Rondo alla Turca

Piano Sonata No. 11 (Mozart)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K 331 is a sonata in three movements:#Andante grazioso — a theme with six variations#Menuetto — a minuet and trio#Alla Turca: Allegretto in A minor and major....

).

The composition is in one movement, with an approximate duration of ten minutes. Though the composer is sometimes regarded as following an Impressionist

Impressionist music

Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere...

 idiom, Tzigane clearly demonstrates Ravel's ability to imitate the (late) Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 style of violin showmanship promoted by such composer-virtuosi as Paganini

Niccolò Paganini

Niccolò Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique...

 and Sarasate

Pablo de Sarasate

Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués was a Navarrese Spanish violinist and composer of the Romantic period.-Career:Pablo Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Navarre, the son of an artillery bandmaster...

.

External links

• Recording for Violin and Lutheal produced with samples
  Sampling (music)
  In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
  
   of the only existing Lutheal
  Luthéal
  The luthéal is a kind of prepared piano which extended the "register" possibilities of a piano by producing cimbalon-like sounds in some registers, exploiting harmonics of the strings when pulling other register-stops, and also some registers making other objects, which were lowered just above the...
  
  from the MiM Brussles by (klassik-resampled)