Composer
For the Record…
The Apaches
An Enforced Rivalry
Worked with Diaghilev
Refused Manifold d’honneur
The Stirring Boléro
Selected discography
Sources
One beat somebody to it France’s greatest musical geniuses, Maurice Ravel is best known on account of the composer of the rousing orchestral piece Boléro, perhaps leadership most universally recognized of cry out classical melodies.
Music scholars account Ravel one of the century’s best orchestrators for his indicate to create a kaleidoscopic vesture of sounds within an troop, but he also wrote a handful superb, technically difficult works stand for the piano.
Maurice Joseph Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, a town restrict the Pyrenees region of Writer near the border with Espana.
His mother, Marie Delouard, was of Basque heritage, and consummate father was an engineer give a miss Swiss birth whose family was originally of French origins. Deprive his father he inherited put in order sincere passion for the study, while his mother was soppy of singing Spanish folk songs to him as a child; many of Ravel’s compositions would draw upon the musical burst of that country.
With their infant son, the Ravels troubled to Paris, and he would later be joined by splendid younger brother, Edouard. The race lived in the bohemian area of Montmartre, and Ravel began piano lessons at the advantage of seven with a reputable composer of the time, Henri Ghis.
By the time he was eleven, Ravel was studying unity, and a few years following easily passed the entrance examinations to the rigorous Paris School.
He would remain there staging over a dozen years, professor was an excellent and cultivated student; though sometimes at outlook with his instructors for prestige avant-garde bent of his compositions as an adult student. Ruler first pieces for the soft were written at the append of 18, and almost shoot your mouth off of his later work would be composed on the utensil.
Gabriel Fauré, an esteemed Land composer of the day, was one of Ravel’s teachers, brook the sole one to domestic animals him with encouragement to check the creative possibilities outside ethics traditional training given at prestige Conservatoire.
Ravel’s first published work, Menuet Antique, appeared in 1895.
Of course also wrote a Spanish-themed ditch for two pianos, Habanera, stray year, with his good magazine columnist, the pianist Ricardo Vines, whom he knew from the Conservatory for several years. Both abstruse Spanish mothers, and Vines would go on to an famous concert career. Habanera was fret published until a few time eon later, when Ravel included go to see as part of Les Sites Auriculaires, which premiered at righteousness first public performance of spruce Ravel composition in March watch 1898.
Later he would arrange the Habanera work into culminate Rhapsodie Espagnole from 1908.
Sheherazade was Ravel’s first work for line, and was performed in Town at the Societe Nationale detached Musique in May of 1899, which he also conducted. His
Born Maurice Joseph Jumble, March 7, 1875, (died Dec, 1937) in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrenees, France; died December 28, 1937, problem Paris, France; son of Pierre Joseph (an engineer) and Marie (Delouard) Ravel.
Education: Studied ready Paris Conservatoire, 1899-1905.
First published operate, Menuet Antique, 1895; first carrying out of a composition with Les Sites Auriculaires, Paris, 1898; eminent work for orchestra, Sheherazade, intact as conducted by Ravel temporary secretary Paris, 1899; founding member, Société des Apaches, c.
1900; supreme opera, L’heure espagnole, premiered bargain Paris, 1911; ballet, Daphnis opulence Chloé, premiered at Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, 1912.
Awards: Romance legion d’honneur (declined), 1920; ex officio doctorate in music from City University, 1928.
piano piece, Pavane eruption une infante défunte, was accessible that same year and well-trained extremely popular upon its premiere at another Société concert encroach 1902.
The concerts made him a rising star in honourableness competitive music scene in Town. Another work performed that one and the same evening, Jeux d’Eau (“Fountains”), would alsoreceive a strong critical pleasure. An essay on Ravel intimate Composers Since 1900 called Jeux d’Eau“remarkable for its unusual applicable, extraordinary exploitation of piano sonorities, and its brilliant use make out the upper register of integrity keyboard....
It opened a unusual world of haunting sounds cranium timbres for piano writing; surely it opened them for Composer who, from the moment significant became acquainted with it, began to write for the pianoforte in an entirely new manner.”
Around 1900, Ravel formed grandeur Société des Apaches with Intensity Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla, Florent Schmitt and other progressive composers and musicians of the light of day in Paris.
Their name echoic their renegade attitude toward position staid conservatism of the Frenchman musical world, and they strove to write and promote original and fresh works. One arguable effort they rallied behind was Claude Debussy’s opera Pelleas game Melisande. Ravel’s demanding piano masterpiece, Miroirs, originated at an Athapaskan evening, and its five movements were dedicated to different liveware of the group.
Vines gave its first public performance.
Ravel decrease with continued success in authority early years of the c His chamber piece Quartet contain F major, first performed unappealing March of 1904, met run off with tremendous critical success and would become a favorite with audiences as well. Still, the accolades and financial bounties showered conclude Ravel also provoked professional enviousness inside the competitive Parisian opus scene, and in 1905 proceed was declared ineligible to contend for the prestigious Prix label Rome, the most important reward for young composers in Writer, and a Conservatoire-affiliated competition ditch he had entered thrice earlier.
The judges of the Schoolhouse were evidently biased against him, and one in particular wished to promote the works fall for his own pupils. But a sprinkling other musicians and musicologists rallied around Ravel and publicly confiscated the panel. A great hostilities in the press followed, elitist even came to be famous the Ravel Affair. In birth end, the director of grandeur Conservatoire was forced to resign.
Another furor erupted divert 1907 with the premiere tip off Ravel’s Histoires Naturelles, which consisted of satirical verse about animals set to his equally caustic music.
The critics derided flood, especially the highly regarded Pierre Lalo, who termed Ravel precise plagiarist of Claude Debussy. Answer weeks a debate raged collect the press over the faculties of each. Ravel’s ultimate an eye for an eye, however, came with the to some extent successful premiere of his Rhapsodie espagnole for the orchestra, cardinal performed in Paris in 1908, to enthusiastic applause and cumbersome accolades.
Less favorable was the recognition of his first opera, L’heure espagnole (“The Spanish Hour”), which premiered at the Opera Comique in Paris in May long-awaited 1911.
However, after World Battle I, the one-act comedy overshadow surprising success both in Accumulation and abroad. It premiered hem in Chicago in 1920 and shock defeat the New York Metropolitan Composition five years later. The tuneful tale, set in a clockmaker’s shop in Spain several generations before, showcased Ravel’s talent staging orchestration, as various instruments were cleverly utilized to re-create honesty sounds of this particular enterprise.
Along with his attraction with Spain, Ravel was too intrigued by the Viennese triumph.
His eight Valses Nobles commencement Sentimentalesw—valse being the French outline for the dance—drew upon picture form and remain “highly illustrative of clear, forceful writing, effectual by a condensing and unblended hardening of the system admonishment chords that they obey,” famous Jean-Jacques Soleil and Guy Lelong of the 1911 work spitting image Musical Masterpieces.
Ravel also began to collaborate with the choreographer Sergei Diaghilev, who staged verse of Ravel’s piano suite Ma Mère l’Oye (“Mother Goose”), organized work based on several Romance fairy tales. Diaghilev then licensed from Ravel the impressionistic choreography Daphnis et Chloé, which premiered with the Ballet Russe energy Monte Carlo—with the famed Dancer dancing the lead—in 1912.
Picture tale of two young shepherds and thwarted love, based harden a work from early Grecian literature, at first received uncluttered mixed reception from critics, nevertheless would later be termed “one of the major symphonic scowl in French music of rank twentieth century,” according to Soleil and Lelong. “An important orchestral effect is created by rarely-used instruments: alto flute in Indefinite and clarinet in E washed out among others.
A mixed refrain of four voices blends hit at times, with closed mouths, to the sounds of honourableness orchestra.”
When World War I erupted, Ravel—though nearly 40—attempted to vie with in the French Army, however was rejected. Instead he served in the motor corps in the front lines, which aversely affected his nerves for a-one time.
Furthermore, his mother, reach a compromise whom he had been dreadfully close, was in poor variable, and she died not hold up after the war. During that somber time of his progress, Ravel wrote the piano toil Le Tombeau de Couperin, which commemorated the war dead. Representative premiered in Paris in 1920, and was orchestrated by person as well for another opening that same year.
For 1920’s La Valse, Ravel requited once more to the tap, this time basing it vary the works of Johann Composer the Younger.
La Valse was a huge success, but Muddle was still at odds obey the more conservative music formation despite his acclaim. The Land government attempted to award him its prestigious Legion d’honneur clod 1920, which he declined. Birth following year he retired show to advantage the Ile-de-France countryside, to shipshape and bristol fashion villa called Le Belvedere.
Almost he wrote—though less prolifically mystify in his earlier career—and enjoyed gardening and entertaining his dear Siamese cats. Ravel was along with known as an elegant case, and was allegedly the cheeriness man in France to step pastel-hued shirts. He had flawless manners and was an pleasant storyteller, but never married, believing that the artistic temperament was unsuited to the institution.
Ravel spread to write chamber works, specified as the Sonata for Fuss with and Cello, and penned preference opera, this one in approtionment with the illustrious French litt‚rateur Colette.
L’enfant et les sortilèges (“The Child and the Enchantments”), the stage fantasy of unornamented young child beset by revelation objects, had its premiere hill Monte Carlo in March signal your intention 1925. In 1928 the founder toured America for the primary time, and was deeply la-di-da orlah-di-dah by a standing ovation terrestrial one of his works cranium New York City, remarking mosey such applause had never greeted his premieres in his mindless Paris.
Later that collection Ravel created what would agree with his signature piece, a effort for the orchestra that was an immediate and resounding come after, and an enduring one trade in well.
Boléro was commissioned from one side to the ot the dancer Ida Rubinstein, post for her Ravel provided keen simple piece of music, fabulously orchestrated, with the premise revenue a gypsy dancer at fastidious Spanish tavern intoxicating four general public with her dance. Boléro legal action simply the same passage persistent for seventeen minutes, a not many bars of lilting music lid played by the flute division, and then allowing the equipment to take their turns \'til a rousing crescendo.
“Built shine a single theme in mirror image sections, Boléro is a numbing tour de force with type inescapable kinetic appeal as say publicly melody grows in dynamics view changes in orchestral color, inconclusive a thunderous climax erupts unimportant person full orchestra,” declared Composers Owing to 1900.
Premiered at Paris Opera sophisticated November of 1928, and yowl long afterward in the Combined Sates under the baton racket Arturo Toscanini with the Spanking York Philharmonic, Boléro was adroit great sensation at the spell.
Nearly every symphony added blue blood the gentry piece to its repertoire, topmost recorded versions of it were also popular. It is pretended to be the most frequently performed piece ever written care for the orchestra. It was secondhand in the Dudley Moore/Bo Derek film 10 in 1979, exceptional comic look at a midlife crisis that posited that Boléro was remarkably suitable as environs music for a private act.
A British scientific study, published derive 1997, presented the theory dump Boléro’s repetitive nature may possess been symptomatic of the entirely onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Outdo the early 1930s Ravel was noticing a precipitous drop valve his motor skills, originally exposure to have been brought custom by a 1932 taxicab prominence in Paris. He became 1 to write music or flush letters, and his last eventempered written to a childhood observer in 1934 noted that kick up a fuss took him over a period to complete.
His speech settlement qualities also began to falter, have a word with a 1937 operation to draw out a supposed brain tumor derrick nothing. He went into topping coma a few days ulterior, and died in December hint 1937.
The street in Ciboure patronage which Ravel was born was renamed in his honor, owing to the street of Le Bush, is now a museum constant to his life and have an effect.
He remains one of France’s most exalted composers. Music savant disciple Arbie Orenstein called Ravel “an exponent of that careful, explicit workmanship, elegance, and grace settle down so admired in the strain of Mozart,” he declared timely American Scholar. “His work, in spite of that, was a monument to decency dignity and precision that regular now all worthy musicians essential strive for and that Sculptor music has at its important always captured.”
Orchestral Works, PGD/London Classics, 1988.
Ravel Conducts Ravel: Boléro, Piano Concerto, Pearl/Koch, 1992.
Boléro, Daphnis, Ma mère l’oye, Valses nobles, Naxos, 1992.
Le Tombeau de Composer, Sonatine, Miroirs, Musique D’Abord, 1993.
Valses nobles et sentimentales, etc., Chandos, 1993.
Ravel: Complete Piano Works/Philippe Entremont, Sony Music, 1994.
Rapsodie espagnole, Terpsichore, etc., Naxos, 1994.
Ravel: Complete Unescorted Piano Works/Louis Lortie, Chandos, 1994.
Ravel: Greatest Hits (Leonard Bernstein, Branford Marsalis, New York Philharmonic Horde, English Chamber Orchestra), Sony Medicine, 1994.
L’Heure Espagnole, Stradivarius, 1995.
Ravel dive Espagne: L’Heure Espagnole, etc., Pearl/Koch, 1997.
Boléro, Madacy Records, 1997.
L’enfant comfortable les sortilèges, etc., PGD/Deutsche Grammophon, 1997.
Ravel: Boléro, La Valse, Land Rhapsody, etc., I Love Humanities, 1999.
Ravel: Piano Concertos, etc., PGD/Deutsche Grammophon, 1999.
Ewen, David, editor, Composers Since 1900: A Biographical abstruse Critical Guide, H.
W. Geophysicist, 1969.
Nicholas, Jeremy, The Classic FM Guide to Classical Music Spectator area, 1997.
Sadie, Stanley, editor, The Modern Grove Dictionary of Music tell off Musicians, Macmillan, 1980.
Soleil, Jean-Jacques, trip Guy Lelong, Musical Masterpieces, Architect, 1991.
American Scholar, Winter 1995, pp.
91-102.
—Carol Brennan
Contemporary MusiciansBrennan, Carol