Le Festin de l'araignée, Op. 17

The ballet unfolds as a single continuous span rather than in separate numbered movements, so listen for changes of scene rather than breaks in the music. It opens with hushed, shimmering string and woodwind textures that set the stage in a garden, evoking dew, stillness, and the slow approach of morning. Solo woodwind lines, especially oboe and flute, act like individual insect characters, each given a distinct melodic turn as they enter the spider's web. A central section grows more agitated and rhythmically pointed, mirroring the struggle and eventual death of a captured mayfly, one of the score's most vivid dramatic moments, marked by tense, halting rhythms and darker harmonies. Harp and celesta glints recur throughout, giving the music a fragile, glittering surface. Near the close, the mood softens into an elegiac, slow-moving passage often singled out as the emotional heart of the piece, a mourning procession of ants for the dead mayfly. The final pages dissolve quietly, the garden returning to stillness as if nothing had happened, leaving the listener with a sense of quiet, ambiguous calm rather than a triumphant ending.

Roussel composed Le Festin de l'araignée (The Spider's Feast) in 1912 on a commission for Jacques Rouché's Théâtre des Arts in Paris, working from a scenario by Gilbert de Voisins that imagines a day in a garden seen through the eyes of insects, centered on a spider awaiting prey. The ballet premiered in Paris in 1913 and was well received, helping establish Roussel's reputation as an orchestral colorist. Its delicate, atmospheric writing, closer to French impressionism than to the more angular style of his later works, made it one of his most enduring successes. Roussel soon extracted a concert suite from the score, and it is this suite, rather than the full ballet, that is most often heard in symphony hall programs today.