Le Martin-Pêcheur

Le Martin-Pêcheur (FR) The Kingfisher. Ravel's setting (1906, Histoires naturelles #4) for voice and piano of a prose poem by Renard. According to Greek mythology, the original martin-pêcheurs were the bodies of Ceyx and Alcyone transformed. Either they were so happy and proud that the gods were angry with them, and changed them into birds, or Ceyx was drowned at sea, and his wife, Alcyone, in her grief had a dream telling her where to find his body. When she did, she threw herself into the sea…