The ballet has always played an important part in French cultural life, since the days when Louis XIV danced in ballets composed and devised by Lully, right up to this year, when a French ballet company came to London having formed itself and created an entirely new repertoire of ballets in spite of the war and the occupation of the country. That, I think, shows that the tradition is very strong. During the early part of this century, however, it received a new stimulus from Diaghilev's Russian Ballet which began its career in Paris in 1909; it had an immediate and enormous effect on composers and painters in all European countries and the French were the first to react to its influence. Diaghilev on his side was anxious to use French talent and in 1911 he commissioned Daphnis et Chloé from Ravel. I want to spend a little time considering this ballet because it's not only Ravel's largest orchestral work, but it is also one of the most considerable pieces of ballet music in existence. At this point, I feel obliged to ask myself how often one can call a ballet of this kind descriptive music. Well, I think one can say that the music acts as a kind of landscape; the mood and emotional climate is created by a musical description of the idyllic scene in which the action is set.