Tzigane is a rhapsodic composition by the French composer Maurice Ravel. The original instrumentation was for violin and piano (with optional luthéal attachment). The first performance took place in London on 26 April 1924 with the dedicatee, Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Arányi, on the violin and Henri Gil-Marchex at the piano (with luthéal). In his biographical sketch of 1928[1] Ravel spoke of it as "a virtuoso piece in the style of a Hungarian rhapsody". It consists of "a string of successive variations juxtaposed without development".[2]
In the early 1920s, Ravel had been planning a piece for violin and piano for his closest female friend, Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. Around the same time Ravel got to know d'Arányi when she played his Sonata for Violin and Cello with Hans Kindler in London, and afterwards regaled the composer with a selection of folk-tunes from her country.[3] In the ensuing two years Ravel put aside the sonata he had intended for Jourdan-Morhange, who by then had retired from playing due to a chronic illness, and wrote the Tzigane.
The luthéal was a new piano attachment (first patented in 1919) with several tone-colour registrations 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 tone of the composition.[4] 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.
Ravel soon orchestrated the piano part, and the version for violin and orchestra was first performed in Amsterdam on 19 October 1924, with Pierre Monteux conducting the Concertgebouw and Samuel Dushkin as soloist.[5] On 30 November 1924 the Paris premiere featured Jelly d'Arányi with the Concerts Colonne under the direction of Gabriel Pierné. The first performance of the version with piano without luthéal was by Robert Soetens in 1925.[6]
The name of the piece is derived from the generic European term for "gypsy" (in French: gitan, tsigane or tzigane rather than the Hungarian cigány) although it does not use any authentic Gypsy melodies.
The composition is in one movement, with an approximate duration of ten minutes, scored for strings and harp, double woodwind, two horns in F, one trumpet in C, celeste, triangle, timbre, and cymbal.[7] The opening is marked 'Lento, quasi cadenza' and is for solo violin, playing on the G string for the first 28 bars; Jankélévitch describes the preamble (Lassan) as "superior exercises – runs, staccato notes, trills and mordents". Then follow a succession of "gipsy improvisations – the Friska, then the Czardas", at the end of which "the rhapsody becomes impatient and runs feverishly through all kinds of successive tonalities without retaining any of them".[2]