Maurice Ravel - Biography
Maurice Ravel was born March 7th 1875 Ciboure in the Basque region of France close to the Spanish border and died on December 28th 1937 in Paris. His Mother was Basque; his father an inventor was of Swiss origin that helped develop the early phases of the internal combustion engine in France. Ravel’s family moved to Paris when he was seven and soon received musical instruction which eventually led to his admission to the Paris Conservatoire. Ravels’ early years in the Conservatoire were spent as a piano student, but he eventually studied composition under the great composer Gabriel Faure for a period of a dozen or more years.
Ravel first professional compositions were to include early piano pieces such as Menut Antique, Sites Auriciulaires for 4 hands, and the piano version of the famous Pavane for a Dead Princess. Ravel also wrote a number of songs in the last years of the nineteenth century along with his first piece for orchestra the Overture to Scheherazade for soprano and orchestra. I mentioned the Pavane as being originally for piano and this brings up a unique feature of Ravel s work that throughout his career he made transcriptions of his piano works for orchestra. The amazing thing is that these pieces which we will identify as they come up in this essay are equally effective in either medium. Between 1901 and 1905 Ravel failed to win the prestigious Prix de Rome the most important prize for a young French composer and caused a great scandal in academic and critical circles. Ravel in the early years of the 20th Century wrote three Cantatas Alciyne, Alyssa and Myrhha and quite a number of songs. Ravel during this period wrote his String Quartet and the celebrated piano pieces Jeau d’eau (Water Games), Sonatine and Mirrors. Amusingly enough as Ravel pointed out in a letter to a music critic later on that these revolutionary pieces were said to be influenced by Debussy but were written well before the Debussy pieces that influence him were written. This essay will not note many personal events because there were few to report. Ravel was an unusually small man not quite five in height, though good looking and dapper in appearance and lived with his mother till she died when he middle aged. There has been speculation that he was gay but the preponderance of evidence was that he was asexual. Ravel as earlier noted was born very close to Spain and that influence was to be felt in his first great orchestral piece Rhapsodie Espagnol and the marvelous one act opera L’Heure Espagnol(The Spanish Time). Next in 1908 comes his greatest piano piece Gaspard De La Nuit (Demons of the Night) inspired by three poems of the French writer Aloysius Bertrand and followed by the four handed piano piece Mother Goose that he would eventually orchestrate as a ballet. There are two well known pieces for piano from these years that were to be re-written for orchestra Alborado Del Gracioso and the Schubert inspired Valses Nobles and Sentimentales. Around 1910 he developed a friendship with the famous ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev for whom he was to write what is probably his greatest work Daphnis et Chloe that was first performed by the Ballet Russe in 1912.
Ravel despite being thirty nine and a small frail man immediately volunteered to join the French Army at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.He was rejected for combat service and became an ambulance driver, something he did for two years until his health broke and had to enter a sanatorium for an extended period of time. During the war years he wrote a piano work that celebrated the glories of French 17th century culture Le Tombeau de Couperin (At the Tomb of Couperin) that he would later orchestrate ,a Piano Trio, Violin Sonata and a Sonata for Violin and Piano. His ambivalence about Germanic culture finds expression in the powerful La Valse a twelve minute piece he called a choreographic poem which is a nightmare version of an Austrian Waltz that becomes a frenzied dance of death. The same year 1920 was to produce the well violin rhapsody Tzigaine (Gypsy). Ravel was to use his incomparable skills as an orchestrator when he accepted a commission from the celebrated Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky to orchestrate Mussorgsky’s Picture at an Exhibition. This was to become with Ravels’ magnificent orchestration one of the most famous of all orchestral pieces.
Though Ravel lived a very quiet life he could on occasion be a bon vivant and experienced the famed Paris night life in the 1920’s.Ravel going to the clubs and reviews became fascinated with early Jazz. He met the young George Gershwin in 1925 and they became friends. Gershwin once asked Ravel if he could give him lessons for which he would pay handsomely Ravel replied that why would he want to become a second rate Ravel when he was a first rate Gershwin; another anecdote also attributed to Stravinsky has Ravel asking him how much he gets for a piece upon hearing that it was $10.000($150,000 adjusted for inflation) he said that perhaps Gershwin should give him lessons. Ravel completed his second opera again a short one less than an hour’s length the exquisite children’s opera L’Enfant des Sortiliges (The Child and the Spells) with a libretto by Colette. From this period we have Ravels’ exotic song cycle Chansons de Madecasses (Songs of Madagascar)
Ravel in 1928 composed for the dancer Ida Rubinstein what was to become his most famous piece Bolero. This piece which is one long fifteen minute crescendo, the same melody repeated again and again only varying in dynamics and orchestration. Ravel was bemused by the tremendous success of the piece and once commented sarcastically that his musical masterpiece contained no music. Ravel was to write two Piano Concertos a Jazz influenced one in G and one for the Left Hand written for the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein who lost his right arm during the First World Wars. These concerto’s and three songs Don Quixote et Dulcinee written for a film that starred the famous Russian Basso Chaliapin (French composer Jacques Ibert eventually wrote the film score) were completed in by 1932.That year Ravel was to sustain a head injury in a car crash that evidently accelerated a pre existing condition, Pick’s Disease that causes the frontal lobe of the brain to deteriorate. Ravel experienced speech and coordination problems that were soon to become full blown dementia an operation was not able to help ,and Ravel died on December 28th 1937.
Ravel is probably the most popular of composers whose creative career mostly spanned the Twentieth Century. Ravel anticipated important trends of the last third of the Twentieth Century. His songs on Greek, Jewish and African themes anticipated the popularity of World Music and his Bolero was unintentionally the ancestor of minimalism. Ravel always had critical resistance from the many German and German influenced Anglo American musicians who felt he was a musical lightweight (his music was in disfavor in Greater Germany during the Third Reich partly because of an unfounded suspicion that he of Jewish origin).
Ravel was different; his musical heroes were Faure and Saint-Saens rather than Wagner and Brahms. He became upset when people paired him with Debussy as Impressionists. He was correct, even though he was an admirer of Debussy (they didn’t seem to be close friends) his ultra clarity and sheen of his music was not like Debussy’s. He in fact abhorred the term Impressionistic Music; he felt the term was only valid for painting. He was one of the greatest orchestrators who ever lived. Few composers benefited more from High Fidelity and later stereo recording techniques. Masterful recordings of his works by conductors like Ansermet, Monteux and Munch became best sellers during the 1950’s. His music today is just as popular as it ever was.
