Valses nobles et sentimentales

Both Schubert and Ravel composed Waltzes (Valses) that were characterised as noble and/or sentimental.

Schubert

It took a long time after Schubert's death before his piano music was taken seriously: until the early 20th century his vast piano solo production was often criticised for being merely salon music, good for inexperienced girls, but not to be taken too seriously.

Schubert can partly be blamed himself for that perception problem. In his own day the problem presented itself primarily as financial however: Schubert was continuously low on money, and his multiple endeavours to shoot of lucrative theatre productions had all ended in failure. In those instances he had been successful in getting some of his more serious piano sonatas published, they didn't sell. What did sell, however, were the countless small dance compositions his compatriots never grew tired of. So, that was what he published, and especially during the last years of his life his friends were successful in convincing Schubert to publish more of these - some of which he had only composed as a diversion at the schubertiades, or to please a friend.

Valses sentimentales

As Opus 50 the 34 sentimental waltzes for piano were published, composed up to 1823, D. 779.

Valses nobles

The success was repeated with the publication of 13 noble waltzes, composed the year before his death, and published as Opus 77 (D. 969).

Ravel

Ravel was intrigued by the waltz genre: already in 1906 he had started the composition of what later would become La Valse, in which he tried to epitomise everything this popular genre stood for. In 1911, prior to the publication of La Valse, he published the piano version of his suite of eight Valses nobles et sentimentales, not distinguishing between which were the noble and which were the sentimental waltzes.

That he wanted to tie up with Schubert is clear, as he said himself:

The title sufficiently indicates my intention to compose a succession of waltzes, after Schubert's example.

The next year an orchestrated version of the Valses was published, the composer indicating he wanted to create a "clearer" orchestral sound than had been the case for the preceding Gaspar de la nuit.