Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, composed between 1914 and 1917, pays homage to the Baroque tradition of François Couperin (1668-1733) and his contemporaries. During those years Ravel joined the French military and dedicated each movement of the piano suite to the memory of a friend who died in World War I. Despite being written while Ravel witnessed the horrors of war and endured the death of his mother, Le Tombeau de Couperin has been considered a light-hearted, reflective work rather than a somber one. Ravel agreed, observing, "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence." When Ravel died, in 1937, it was the score of Menuet that stood on his pianos sheet music stand! This arrangement, based on the original piano work, omitting the fugue and the toccata just like Ravel's own orchestration, is scored for 7 flutes; two c-flutes (one changing to piccolo), two alto flutes, two bass flutes and one contrabass flute.