Maurice Ravel

Menuet sur le nom de Haydn

It was Jules Écorcheville (1872–1915) who took the initiative in 1909 of organizing a unique commemoration of the centenary of the death of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809). The musicologist suggested to several French composers that they should write a piece based on the name of Haydn. It was on this occasion that Maurice Ravel composed the Menuet. Écorcheville’s initiative follows the tradition of the musical tombeau, a piece dedicated to the memory of a musician friend who has died. Particularly cultivated in the Baroque period, it re-emerged with renewed vigour in the early twentieth century, as witnessed by another famous piece by Ravel: the Tombeau de Couperin (1917).