Live concert performance, 1989 Sydney Opera House
Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit" had a literary inspiration and its three piano pieces, "Ondine," "Le Gibet" and "Scarbo," are named after some prose poems by Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841). A French romantic in love with the instability of the Middle Ages rather than the Platonic harmony of its troubadours, Bertrand invented a series of portraits and encounters in his collection, called "Gaspard de la Nuit."