#tombeau

Cimetière du Père Lachaise - Paris-France

Tombe de Théodore Géricault

Ensemble Ouranos plays the first movement of Le Tombeau de Couperin (M. Ravel), arranged for woodwind quintet.

The piece, although often heard in an orchestral arrangement that Ravel himself made, began life as a piece for solo piano, as here, played by Angela Hewitt at Koerner Hall, Toronto, in February 2012.

The title was punned upon by Douglas Hofstadter in his volume Le Ton beau de Marot, which he wrote both as an actual tombeau, or elegy, for his wife and as a meditation on translation and its limits and pleasures.