In his “Autobiographical Sketch” Ravel looks back and stresses the importance of his “Miroirs” (HN842), published in 1906, for his harmonic evolution. He said that they had “disconcerted even those musicians who had been most familiar with my compositional style up to then”. This is particularly true of the fourth piece in the collection, “Alborada del gracioso” (Morning song of the court jester), with its frequent employment of harsh dissonances. This both technically and musically charming genre scene, full of rousing ideas and rhythms, is one of the French composer’s best-known piano pieces today. We are now issuing it in a single Urtext edition.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
