Ravel used to say it was useful for apprentice composers to copy their predecessors and that, if they possessed any individuality, it would inevitably show ‘in their unwitting infidelity to their models’.
Well, up to a point. These three Prix de Rome competition cantatas, written in the summers of 1901-03, were intended to persuade the musical authorities that Ravel was the one young composer who deserved a three-year stay in the Eternal City, paid for by the French government. Unfortunately, the authorities didn’t agree and, after a third prize with Myrrha in 1901, he was entirely passed over in the following two years.
Of course, musical politics came into it. But until some scholar examines all the competing entries in detail, we can’t say Ravel was robbed. Certainly Caplet’s Myrrha (Marco Polo, 10/95) is superior to Ravel’s, both in structure and orchestration. Ravel’s Alcyone (1902) is the best of his three cantatas, as Marcel Marnat says in his insert-note, with a very creditable, and credible, storm, and signs of Ravel’s real involvement, even if a repeated quotation from the first movement of Debussy’s String Quartet, did not necessarily endear him to the jury. But Alyssa (1903) is pretty tawdry stuff, plainly imitating Massenet (a crucial jury member) and, as Ravel admitted, hampered by some surprisingly duff orchestration.
But even if this is Ravel dernier cru, it’s still highly intriguing, and Alcyone, in particular, has many ravishing moments. The performances are excellent, boasting three sopranos with clean, unforced tone and fine diction.'