RAVEL | Miroirs: Alborada del gracioso: m. 44

SPECIAL COLLECTION | Dorothy Brandwein’s Ravel Fingerings

Published on 4/26/2022 with the author’s permission

First appeared in Dorothy Woster Brandwein, "Divisi Fingering in Selected Passages from Ravel's Solo Piano Works" (DMA diss., University of Missouri–Kansas City, 1981), 39, 88.

38–39: “When fingering is especially awkward for one hand, the redistribution of even one or two notes immediately eliminates the struggle of performing the music as it is scored. The extremely difficult glissando-like passage from ‘Alborada del gracioso’ (Example 20) is a good example of this. The right hand thumb needs time (which it does not have) to reach for the second diminished-third in the gesture; as an alternative, the left hand can play the lower note of the interval and thus preserve the momentum and clarity of the glissando .”