M.Ravel and Japan #5 Jirohatchi Satsuma part 2 - M.Ravel's Japanese friend
In the post ‘M.Ravel and Japan #3’, I talked about Jirohatchi Satsuma, one of the few close friends of Ravel in the 1920s, and how the friendship of Satsuma and Ravel began. In this post, I would like to focus on an untranslated Japanese article that is a very interesting source to us Ravel lovers. For my master thesis, I translated some of it into English and the stories in it can confirm the close friendship of Satsuma and Ravel in the 1920s.
“Ravel was a methodical person, his lifestyle itself was just so methodical. And the funny thing is that Ravel does not sleep in the night, always. And he does not compose during the night instead either. To sum up, he is hanging out. And he did not drink alcohol that much either. And of course, he never gets drunk or becomes rude. He was just silently listening to young people’s stories.”
“There was a small villa in Montfort in the suburbs of Paris, Ravel should have gone back there but he could not, so he went there (a cheap inn with iron beds). Probably it was like a hundred franc at that time for a month. It was an awful room. It did not even have a carpet. There was just an iron in the room, and as soon as Ravel comes back there, he changes to pajamas and starts pressing his clothes urgently. He starts pressing from ties, then trousers and jacket, then he sleeps finally. However when he finally sleeps there is already sun rising. The curtains are always closed. One day I asked him “You don’t know what morning is. Why can you compose the scene of a morning without knowing what morning is? You don’t know the cry of sparrows. You have never seen skylarks.” Then Ravel said that he probably had seen them when he was still a child, but he does not remember it well. He was already becoming mentally ill at that time, I suppose. After I asked him if everything he composes is nonsense, he continued like this: “Fortunately it is Ravel’s morning. It is the morning I see in my dream. If you see the real morning, perhaps you cannot compose the real morning. I can compose Ravel’s morning freely because I luckily never breathe the morning air.”
Which music could possibly be the “Ravel’s morning”? The first composition that came up in my mind was of course Lever du jour from Daphnis et Chloé, undoubtedly one of the most mesmerizing works of Ravel. The sunrise here is too good to be true, I feel like I am still half in my beautiful dream and not entirely awake yet. Needless to say, the real sunrise has a godlike beauty and makes us feel small in front of nature, however, I believe Ravel’s sunrise reached the point of ultimate beauty of sunrise that a human being could ever possibly create. Art is after all man-made, and we evaluate its value by how beautiful, in other words how godlike (in the context of something beyond human being) the creation is. So I think one of the functions of Art is making us realize that there may be an existence or something that humanity cannot reach. Ravel’s Lever du jour is absolutely stunning work by its extraordinary beauty, so it can stop our earthly desires and can bring us temporarily to the unknown world beyond humanity. It is indeed like a dream as Ravel sees morning only in his dream. I truly think Ravel was a composer who did not simply compose ordinarily beautiful works, but could bring us to a different level or state of the mind. People call someone like him genius, or master. About beauty in music, I have a lot to talk about so I am planning to express it in different posts sometime soon.
The entire part Ⅲ of Daphnis et Chloé by Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra
Let’s go back to Satsuma’s stories. Here, I wrote down some more stories I found in the interview of Satsuma recalling the memory with Ravel (Sugao no Kyosyo tachi (translate.: The real face of great masters), 1950)
Ravel hated Schubert. But he liked old Italian songs. (I doubt if this one is reliable though. When I visited his house in Le Belvédère, I found the face of Schubert engraved on a small metal plate. It was hung on the wall of his composting room. If he hated Schubert, would he do such a thing?
Ravel was a gourmet. Satsuma and Ravel often talked about food. Ravel’s meal was prepared by a house maid, and when he ate outside, the restaurant he chose was always a good one. The kitchen at his house was always kept tidy.
Ravel’s source of income was mainly from publishing his compositions and giving concerts. According to Satsuma, he had a relatively rich life.
Ravel was very fashionable. He often visited London for his concerts, where he bought 150 ties once. His outfit was also well made according to Satsuma. Satsuma was a customer of a tailor in the department store “Berkeley” (I am not sure if it still exists, or if my spelling is right…) in Paris. Satsuma introduced his favorite cutter Elina to Ravel, then when she opened her own tailoring shop, Ravel became her customer too.
“Ravel was a truly quiet man. And he was a fashionable man too. (...) But normally he was very cheerful. He was a Basques, that is very close to Spanish. Anyhow, there was no such an easy going person other than him.” by Satsuma
“The only friends he was constantly seeing were me and Delage. And Janne, the wife of Gil-Marchex. These people became close to him.” by Satsuma
I must say that almost none of the research between Satsuma and Ravel was done by French researchers, and the only available sources are provided by Satsuma himself. This means we have to be careful and consider whether all of the stories I summarized here are historically accurate enough. K.Murakami, the Japanese author on the book of Satsuma also points out that the dates provided by Satsuma are not always reliable. (Murakami, 2009, pp. 111-112) However, I still believe that to understand the circumstances around Ravel in the 1920s, the friendship between Satsuma and Ravel is essential.
For the further investigations into Ravel’s life, the relationship between Satsuma and Ravel still has great potential for new discoveries. For now, I close this post here but whenever I find more interesting stories between the two extraordinary men I will write about them again.
