No. 5: La vallée des cloches (The Valley of Bells)

Dedicated to Maurice Delage (1879-1961), Ravel's pupil and friend. The fundamental C# ≈ D♭, the opening uppermost voice pattern alternating between thirds and fourths, and the improvisatory-sounding melodic movement due to changing meters correspond to the first piece, 'Noctuelles' (Moths); however, the distance between voices created by the use of three staves and the hollow sound resulting from the frequent perfect intervals rather provide the listener with a contrasting sense of openness. While the piece can be clearly divided into A–B–A’ sections by key, further dividing the A section based on the nature of its motifs reveals a symmetrical structure of a–b–c–b’–a’. In sections a and a’, sextuplets of double stops in fourths (changing to thirds midway through section a) and octave leaps are played softly, as if depicting the echoing and lingering sound of bells in the valley; whereas in sections b and b’, more densely voiced chords descending in fourths are played, imitating the sound of the bells themselves. Section c is distinct from sections a and b, possessing a clear melodic line, which, as it moves from the middle voice to the upper voice, evokes classical polyphony rather than layers of sound imitating bell resonances. If this melodic line is interpreted not as the 'bell' itself but as 'music within the church where the bells are ringing,' then one could also consider that throughout this piece, the composer's perspective zooms in from 'the entire valley echoing with bells' to 'the church in the valley where the bells are ringing' to 'the music inside the church,' and then recedes again.