Description
From my forthcoming collection of intermediate and late-intermediate piano pieces in Impressionist styles, this is an homage to Maurice Ravel's Habañera-styled pieces (including the Vocalise-étude, the Habañera from the Rapsodie Espagnole, and others).
It introduces techniques that Ravel frequently uses but that less-than-advanced students rarely encounter in repertoire at their level: numerous hand and arm crossings, 3-against-4 polyrhythms as evident in the habañera, very high registers, dissonances like German 7th chords and diminished thirds, and Spanish-flavored modal writing, to name a few.
Since most currently published collections of Impressionist-style pedagogical repertoire focus on Claude Debussy's language, this piece is a welcome addition to the literature and will help bridge the gaps between standard teaching repertoire and pieces like Ravel's Sonatine, while also exposing students to a new, rich, and inviting tonal language that will inspire them to seek out more of Ravel's work.