Dedicated to Ravel's counterpoint teacher André Gedalge, the trio was first performed in Paris in January 1915, by Alfredo Casella (piano), Gabriel Willaume (violin), and Louis Feuillard (cello).

"[1] However, Ravel's first biographer and friend Roland-Manuel had a different account of the theme's origin: Our great musicians have never been ashamed of admiring a pretty tune from a café concert.

[2]While initial progress on the Trio was slow, the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 spurred on Ravel to finish the work so that he could enlist in the army.

In tackling the former problem, Ravel adopted an orchestral approach to his writing: by making extensive use of the extreme ranges of each instrument, he created a texture of sound unusually rich for a chamber work.

He employed coloristic effects such as trills, tremolos, harmonics, glissandos, and arpeggios, thus demanding a high level of technical proficiency from all three musicians.

Meanwhile, to achieve clarity in texture and to secure instrumental balance, Ravel frequently spaced the violin and cello lines two octaves apart, with the right hand of the piano playing between them.

While Ravel never commented on the significance of the movement's title, Brian Newbould has suggested that the poetic form is reflected in the way these two themes are developed in alternation.

Against a backdrop of violin arpeggio harmonics (previously used by Ravel in his Trois poèmes de Mallarmé) and double-stopped trills from the cello, the piano presents the five-bar first theme.

The trumpet calls in the development section (played by the piano after rehearsal number 7) may be an allusion to the declaration of war in August 1914, which coincided with Ravel's work on this movement.