Description
Five o’clock Foxtrot is from L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells) – a one-act opera with music by Ravel and a libretto by Colette. In 1916 Colette completed the libretto in just eight days, but Ravel laboured long over the music until, suffering from physical exhaustion and poor health, ceased work on it in 1920. He was eventually persuaded to resume his work, and completed the score in 1925.
The opera is about a rude, destructive child who is scolded by his mother and then reprimanded by the objects and animals he’s damaged and hurt. He tries to befriend them but they are not interested. When the child cries out “Maman” the animals attack him in an act of vengeance, but in the chaos a squirrel is hurt. Seeing the child tend to the squirrel’s wounds the animals have a change of heart. They then carry the child back home, singing his praises.
In the early 1920s Ravel was entranced by the new sounds of American jazz and ragtime he had heard in Paris’s cafés and nightclubs. He began to incorporate ‘jazz effects’ (as he called them) into his compositions, including L’enfant et les sortilèges. In fact, the opera, Ravel said, “is a very smooth blending of all styles from all epochs, from Bach up to … Ravel.”
The opera has numerous characters including a Wedgwood teapot and a China teacup. In the segment entitled How’s your mug? they sing a bizarre duet in pigeon-English and quasi-Chinese, sometimes singing over each other in entirely different keys. This playful, jazz-inspired ragtime sequence became known as Five o’clock Foxtrot in the 1930s after various dance bands took it up as an instrumental number.
This lively little number would make an ideal encore!
Also available for wind quintet and piano.
