The sounds made by water – those of fountains, waterfalls and streams – were a popular subject in musical impressionism. Liszt had already explored this in his “Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este”, and it was also a subject that inspired Ravel. At the same time he broke fresh compositional ground: in his “Jeux d’eau” he developed a kind of floating harmony and created new tonal effects. These shimmering tone paintings are among the first of our Urtext editions by this important French master. In order to provide musicians with a first-rate engraving for this highly complex music, we have slightly increased our Urtext format – and can thus guarantee excellent readability.
