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Maurice Ravel

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Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937) was a Basque French composer and pianist of the impressionistic period, known especially for the subtlety, richness and poignancy of his music. His piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music have become staples of the concert repertoire.

Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs and Gaspard de la Nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, including Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, uses tonal color and variety of sound and instrumentation very effectively.

To the general public, Ravel is probably best known for his orchestral work, Boléro, which he considered trivial and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music.

According to SACEM, Ravel's estate earns more royalties than that of any other French musician. Most of Ravel's works will not enter the public domain until 2015.

Biography

Early life

Ravel was born in Ciboure (Ziburu in Basque language), in the north of Basque Country, France, near Biarritz, part of the French Basque region. His mother, Marie Delouart, was Basque, while his father, Joseph Ravel, was a Swiss inventor and industrialist. Some of the father's inventions were quite important, including an early internal-combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death," an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a hit in the early 1900s. After the family moved to Paris, Ravel's younger brother Édouard was born. At age seven, young Maurice began piano lessons and, five or six years later, began composing. His parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. During the first few years of the 1900s, Ravel joined with a number of innovative young artists who were referred to as the "Apaches" (hooligans).

He studied composition at the Conservatoire under Gabriel Fauré for a remarkable fourteen years. During his years at the Conservatoire, Ravel tried numerous times to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, but to no avail. After a scandal involving his loss of the prize in 1905 (to Victor Gallois — Ravel had been considered the favorite to win), Ravel left the Conservatoire. The incident —named the "Ravel Affair" by the Parisian press — also led to the resignation of the Conservatoire's director, Théodore Dubois.

Work with Diaghilev

Ravel later worked with impresario Sergei Diaghilev who staged Ma Mère l'Oye and Daphnis et Chloé. The latter was commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the great Vaslav Nijinsky. In 1920, the French government awarded him the Légion d'honneur, but Ravel refused. Soon, he retired to the French countryside where he continued to write music, albeit less prolifically.

Diaghilev commissioned Ravel to write La Valse (1920), originally named Wien (Vienna), and Ravel was hurt by the fact that Diaghilev never used the composition. When the two men met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev's hand, and Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel (friends talked Diaghilev out of it). The men never met again.

In 1928, Ravel made a concert tour in America. In New York City, he received a moving standing ovation which he remarked was unlike any of his underwhelming premieres in Paris. He traveled as far west as San Francisco, where he conducted a concert of his orchestral music. That same year, Oxford University awarded him an honorary doctorate. He also met George Gershwin and the two became friends. Ravel's admiration of American jazz led him to include some jazz elements in a few of his later compositions, especially the two piano concertos.

Ravel is not known to have had any intimate relationships. Many of his friends have suggested that Ravel was known to frequent the bordellos of Paris, but the issue of his sexuality remains largely a mystery. Rumors have surfaced from time to time that Ravel was homosexual, possibly because of his work with Diaghilev. No factual (or reliably anecdotal) evidence has ever been found to substantiate this rumor. Ravel made a remark at one time suggesting that because he was such a perfectionist composer, so devoted to his work, that he could never have a lasting intimate relationship with anyone.

Although he considered his small stature and light weight an advantage to becoming an aviator, during the First World War Ravel was not allowed to enlist as a pilot because of his age and weak health. Instead, upon his enlistment, he became a truck driver. He named his truck "Adelaide". Most references to what he drove in the war indicate it was an artillery truck or generic truck. No primary source mentions him driving an ambulance.

His few students included Maurice Delage, Manuel Rosenthal, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Vlado Perlemuter.

Ravel made one of his few recordings when he conducted his Boléro with the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1930. Ravel reportedly conducted a group of Parisian musicians following the world premiere of his second piano concerto, the Concerto in G, with Marguerite Long, who had been the soloist in the premiere. EMI later reissued the 1932 recording on LP and CD. Although Ravel was listed as the conductor on the original 78-rpm discs, this is now disputed and it's possible he merely supervised the recording.

Illness and death

In 1932 Ravel sustained a blow to the head in a taxi accident. The injury was considered minor, but soon thereafter he began to complain of aphasia-like symptoms similar to Pick's disease. He had begun work on music for a film version of Don Quixote (1933) featuring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and directed by G. W. Pabst. When Ravel became unable to compose, he could not write down the musical ideas he heard in his mind, Pabst hired Jacques Ibert.

In late 1937 Ravel consented to experimental brain surgery. One hemisphere of his brain was re-inflated with serous fluid. He awoke from the surgery, called for his brother Edouard, lapsed into a coma and died shortly after. He is buried in Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris.

Musical style

Ravel considered himself in many ways a classicist. He relied on traditional forms and structures as ways of presenting his new and innovative harmonies. He often masked the sections of his structure with transitions that disguised the beginnings of the motif. This is apparent in his Valses nobles et sentimentales — inspired by Franz Schubert's collections, Valses nobles and Valses sentimentales — where the seven movements begin and end without pause, and in his chamber music where many movements are in sonata-allegro form, hiding the change from developmental sections to recapitulation.

Though Ravel's music has tonal centers, it was innovative for the time period. In keeping with the French school pioneered by Chabrier, Satie, and Debussy (to name a few), Ravel's melodies are almost exclusively modal. Instead of using major or minor for his predominant harmonic language, he preferred modes with major or minor flavors – for example the Mixolydian, with its lowered leading tone, instead of major, and the Aeolian instead of harmonic minor. As a result, there are virtually no leading tones in his output. Melodically, he tended to favor two modes: the Dorian and the Phrygian. He was in no way dependent on the modes exclusively; he used extended harmonies and intricate modulations outside the realm of traditional modal practices. Ravel was fond of chords of the ninth and eleventh, and the acidity of his harmonies is largely the result of a fondness for unresolved appoggiaturas (listen to the Valses nobles et sentimentales). His piano music, some of which is noted for its technical challenges (for example Gaspard de la nuit), was an extension of Lisztian virtuosity. Even his most difficult pieces, however, are marked by elegance and refinement. He was inspired by various dances, his favorite being the minuet. Other forms from which Ravel drew material include the forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera, passacaglia, and the boléro.

Ravel has almost always been considered one of the two great French impressionist composers, the other being Debussy (it is worth noting, however, that both Ravel and Debussy rejected this description of their styles). In his A la maniere de...Borodine (In the manner of...Borodine), Ravel plays with the ability to both mimic and remain original. In a more complex situation, A la maniere de...Emmanuel Chabrier /Paraphrase sur un air de Gounod ("Faust IIème acte"), Ravel takes on a theme from Gounod's Faust and arranges it in the style of Emmanuel Chabrier. Even in writing in the style of others, Ravel's own voice as a composer remained distinct.

Ravel had very meticulously crafted manuscripts. Unfortunately, early printed editions of his works were prone to errors. Painstakingly, he worked with his publisher, Durand, in correcting them. In a letter, Ravel wrote that when proofing L'enfant et les sortilèges, after many other editors had proofread the opera, he could still find ten errors per page. Each piece was carefully crafted, although Ravel wished that, like the historical composers he admired, he could write a great quantity of works. Igor Stravinsky once referred to Ravel as the "Swiss Watchmaker", a reference to the intricacy and precision of Ravel's works.

Musical Influence

Active in a period of great artistic innovations and diversification, Ravel benefited from many influences, though his music defies any facile classification. As Vladimir Jankélévitch notes in his biography, "no influence can claim to have conquered him entirely […]. Ravel remains ungraspable behind all these masks which the snobbery of the century has attempted to impose. Ravel's musical language was ultimately highly original, neither absolutely modernist nor impressionist. Like Debussy, Ravel categorically refused this description which he believed was reserved exclusively for painting.

Nonetheless, Ravel was very open to influences and was a remarkable synthesist of disparate styles. Certain aspects of his music can be considered to fall into the lineage of 18th century French classicism beginning with Couperin and Rameau as in Le tombeau de Couperin. The uniquely 19th century French sensibilities of Fauré and Chabrier are reflected in Sérénade grotesque, Pavane pour une infante défunte, and Menuet antique, while pieces such as Jeux d’eau, and the String Quartet owe something to the innovations of Satie and Debussy. The virtuosity and poetry of Gaspard de la nuit and Concerto pour la main gauche hint at Liszt and Chopin. His admiration and interest in American jazz is echoed in L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Sonate pour violon and the Piano Concerto in G, while the Russian school of music inspired homage in In the style of Borodin and the orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition. He variously cited Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Schubert and Schönberg as inspirations for various pieces.

Ravel wrote, in 1928, that composers should be aware of both individual and national consciousness. That year, Ravel had toured the United States and Canada by train performing piano recitals in the great concert halls of twenty-five cities. In their reluctance to take jazz and blues as a nationalistic style of music, he stated American composers' "greatest fear is to find themselves confronted by mysterious urges to break academic rules rather than belie individual consciousness. Thereupon these musicians, good bourgeois as they are, compose their music according to the classical rules of the European epoch."

There is a story that when American composer George Gershwin met Ravel, he mentioned that he would have liked to study with the French composer, if that were possible. (Generally, Ravel did not take students.) According to Gershwin, the Frenchman retorted, "Why do you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?The second part of the story has Ravel asking Gershwin how much money he made. Upon hearing Gershwin's reply, Ravel suggested that maybe he should study with Gershwin. (This tale may well be apocryphal: Gershwin seems also to have told a near-identical story about a conversation with Arnold Schoenberg; see the Wikipedia article for George Gershwin.) In any event, this had to have been before Ravel wrote Boléro which became financially very successful for him. He intended to write an earlier concerto, Zazpiak Bat, but it was never finished. The title reflects his Basque heritage: meaning 'The Seven Are One', it refers to the seven Basque regions, and was a motto often used in connection with the idea of a Basque nation. Surviving notes and fragments also confirm that this naturally was to be heavily influenced by Basque music. Instead, Ravel abandoned the piece, using its nationalistic themes and rhythms in some of his other pieces.

Ravel commented that André Gédalge, his professor of counterpoint, was very important in the development of his skill as a composer. As an orchestrator, Ravel studied the ability of each instrument carefully in order to determine the possible effects. This may account for the success of his orchestral transcriptions, both of his own piano works and those of other composers, such as Mussorgsky, Debussy and Schumann.

Notable compositions

For a complete list of works, see List of compositions by Maurice Ravel.

Media

See also

References

  • The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge Companions to Music) Publisher: Cambridge University Press (August 24, 2000) ISBN 0-521-64856-4
  • Maurice Ravel: a Life by Benjamin Ivry, Publisher: Welcome Rain (2000) ISBN 0-156-649152-5
  • "Maurice Ravel." Contemporary Musicians, Volume 25. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005.

  • Maurice Ravel, Gerald Larner, Phaidon Press, London, 1996

Notes

External links

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