A glamorous violinist and Mother Goose

Leila Josefowicz

Yesterday at the Symphony we heard a Rachmaninov's Symphony and Leila Josefowicz played Prokofiev's Violin Concerto. We saw her perform once before in Seattle, and John claims she was wearing exactly the same toga dress then. Well-- I wouldn't argue with John, since he has a steel trap memory at the Symphony. Plus we sit in the fourth row and have an especially good view of lady violin soloists.

The third work was Ravel's Mother Goose Suite. In 1908 Ravel composed this piano music for the young children of his good friends. Both kids played the piano, and although it was a nice gift the piece proved beyond their abilities. Never mind, other French children were able to play it later and Ravel soon transcribed it for full orchestra.

Ravel's inspiration for Mother Goose came from the children's stories written by Charles Perrault (1628-1793.) I always think of Grimm and Anderson's creepy fairy tales, but Perrault created the fairy tale genre when he rewrote folk legends in a book called Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, with the subtitle Mother Goose. It was immediately popular and stories like Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella suddenly became the inspiration for countless composers and writers. The key phase here is "stories with morals," because these are not the short sweet nursery rhymes we associate with later Mother Goose books.

The three stories Ravel used in the Mother Goose Suite were Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb and Beauty and the Beast. As I was browsing around the Internet last night, I ran across all sorts of vintage illustrations.

How about a dive-bombing Mother Goose
to scare your pants off?

A lovely Burne-Jones painting of Sleeping Beauty.

Here's the birth of Tom Thumb.
At least mom is happy...it was so easy!
(The fairies dropped him off.)

Later, the proud dad carries him around on his hat.

And a poignant Beauty and the Beast illustration
from an old fairytale book.