Maurice Ravel
“And yet I still have so much music in my head.”
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people around him ⏳🌊
- FamilyMarie Delouart
His Basque-born mother; the Spanish songs she sang to him became the roots of Ravel's music, and her death in 1917 shook him deeply.
- FriendshipRicardo Viñes
His closest friend from their Conservatoire days, who premiered many of his piano works, including “Jeux d'eau” and “Gaspard de la nuit.”
- InfluenceErik Satie
An older composer he met through his father, whose unconventional harmonies showed the young Ravel a new path.
- TeacherGabriel Fauré
The composition teacher who respected his pupil's individuality; Ravel dedicated “Jeux d'eau” and his string quartet to him.
- RivalryClaude Debussy
They admired each other, yet drifted apart amid the critics' factional quarrels; after his death, Ravel wrote a duo in his memory.
- PatronageIda Rubinstein
The dancer who commissioned “Boléro,” she also paid for the ailing Ravel's 1935 trip to Spain·Morocco.
I. A Basque child · 1875–1889 (age 0–14)
(Birth) Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, a harbor village in the Basque country of southwestern France. His father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was a Swiss-born engineer, an inventor who worked on steam- and gas-powered engines and early automobiles. His mother, Marie Delouart, was a Basque woman born in Ciboure. The two had met while his father was working on the railways in Spain, and they married in Paris in 1874. (Paris) Three months after the baby's birth, the family moved to Paris, where Ravel would live for nearly half a century. In 1878 his brother Édouard was born. Édouard followed their father into engineering and remained, all his life, his brother's closest family. Ravel was especially devoted to his mother. The Spanish songs and Basque memories she shared with him were what he regarded, all his life, as his roots. (Machines) His father often took the young boy to see factories and workshops. A love of precisely meshing, smoothly turning mechanisms became part of Ravel's temperament. Stravinsky is said to have later called him ‘the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers,’ a nickname, half praise and half teasing, that points both to his father's homeland and to his way of composing. (First lessons) A music lover himself, his father recognized his son's gift early. At seven Ravel began piano with Henri Ghys, and around twelve he learned the rudiments of harmony and composition from Charles-René. He was not fond of practicing, and the story goes that his mother had to bribe him with pocket money to get him to sit at the piano.
II. The dandy of the Conservatoire · 1889–1900 (age 14–25)
(The Exposition) In 1889, at fourteen, he entered the preparatory piano class of the Paris Conservatoire. At the Exposition Universelle held in Paris that same year, he heard a Javanese gamelan ensemble and the Russian concerts conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov. The unfamiliar scales and timbres lingered long in his ear. For years afterward he kept Rimsky-Korsakov's scores at hand to master the craft of fitting instruments together, that is, orchestration. (Viñes) Around 1891, when he moved up to Charles de Bériot's piano class, he became inseparable from Ricardo Viñes, a Spanish pianist his own age. Together they read Baudelaire and Poe and raved about the music of Chabrier. Viñes would go on to give the premieres of Ravel's important piano works one after another. (Satie) Around 1893, through his father, he met Erik Satie. Satie's harmonies, which slipped past the rules of the schools, gave the young Ravel a sense of liberation. His Conservatoire results, on the other hand, were unremarkable; having won no prizes, he was dropped from the piano class in 1895. (Fauré) Returning to the Conservatoire in 1897, he joined Gabriel Fauré's composition class and studied counterpoint with André Gedalge. Fauré did not stifle his pupil's individuality, and the two cherished each other for life. His 1899 piano piece “Pavane pour une infante défunte” soon became a salon favorite. Ravel said he had chosen the title simply because he liked the sound of the words. In 1900 he failed the fugue examination and lost his status as a regular student, but he stayed on in Fauré's class as an auditor. (Dandy) Short and slight, he took great care over his clothes and was known among his friends as a dandy. The calm reserve with which he seldom revealed his inner feelings also became part of his image from this time on.
This was the piece that first introduced Ravel to the salons during his years as Fauré's pupil. Though he later criticized its form as thin, he nonetheless orchestrated it in 1910.
- The orchestral version opens with a solo horn singing the first melody. Because the soft notes must be sustained round and even, it is counted among the trickiest passages for horn players.
- It is built so that the same opening melody returns between two other passages (rondo). Each time it comes back, the instrument carrying the melody and the accompaniment change, and it is rewarding to listen for the differences.
- Ravel is said to have told a pianist who played it too slowly, ‘It is the princess who is dead, not the pavane.’ Tempos vary greatly from one performance to the next, so it is worth comparing several recordings.
- Ravel explained that the piece does not depict a sad story but evokes a dance a little princess might once have danced at the old Spanish court. Hear it less as a funeral than as an antique scene.
III. The Apaches and the Prix de Rome · 1900–1908 (age 25–33)
(Apaches) Around 1900, with Viñes, the composer Florent Schmitt, the poet Léon-Paul Fargue and others, he formed a circle that called itself the ‘Apaches’ (hooligans). When Debussy's opera “Pelléas et Mélisande” premiered in 1902, they held their ground in the audience and cheered it on. (Water) In 1901 he wrote the piano piece “Jeux d'eau” and dedicated it ‘to my dear master Gabriel Fauré.’ Indebted to Liszt's “Les jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este,” it translated the glitter of fountains into a new piano sound. Of the string quartet he completed in 1903, Debussy is said to have urged him not to change a single note. (Prix de Rome) Meanwhile he competed five times for the Prix de Rome, the gateway for young composers. His best result was third place, in 1901. In 1905, his last year before the age limit, he was eliminated in the preliminary round despite already being well known, and the press erupted. It also came out that every finalist was a pupil of the jury member Charles Lenepveu; after the Conservatoire's director Théodore Dubois stepped down, Fauré became director. (Debussy) He and Debussy admired each other's music, but as critics cast Ravel as Debussy's imitator, their supporters split into two camps. Ravel countered that “Jeux d'eau” had appeared before Debussy's similar piano pieces. His part in a collection that friends took up to help Debussy's wife Lily after Debussy left her also drove the two apart. (Spain) In 1907–08 he wrote the “Rapsodie espagnole” and the opera “L'heure espagnole.” The Spain he had come to know through his mother's songs was not an exotic land to him but a second home. In 1908 he completed the piano suite “Gaspard de la nuit,” and in October of that year his father, whose health had been failing, died.
A piano suite on three prose poems by Aloysius Bertrand, written in 1908 as his father was weakening. His father died that autumn.
- The first piece, “Ondine,” tells of a water nymph who loves a mortal. At the opening the right hand spins out finely trembling, shimmering chords, and beneath them the nymph's song flows forth.
- In the second piece, “Le gibet,” a single B-flat (B♭) tolls from beginning to end like an evening bell. The crux of the performance is keeping that note at the same strength and spacing to the very end.
- The third piece, “Scarbo,” is a dwarf goblin who appears at night and wreaks havoc in the room. Ravel said he set out to write something harder than Balakirev's “Islamey,” and with its rapid repeated notes and wide leaps it is counted among the most difficult piano works.
- A poem by Bertrand is printed at the head of each score. Read the poem before listening, and the scene the music paints becomes far more vivid.
IV. Fairy tales and ballet · 1908–1914 (age 33–39)
(Children) Ravel never married and had no children. Almost no reliable record of any romance survives. Instead he came and went at friends' homes and played freely with their children. For Mimi and Jean, the children of his Polish-born friend Cipa Godebski and his wife, he wrote “Ma mère l'Oye” for piano four hands in 1908–10. Drawing on the fairy tales of Perrault and Madame d'Aulnoy, the piece was reborn as an orchestral suite in 1911 and as a ballet in 1912. (Independence) In 1909 he took the lead in founding the Société musicale indépendante, with Fauré as its president. It grew out of frustration that the Société nationale de musique, led by Vincent d'Indy, was ignoring new works by young composers. (Ballet) That same year he received a commission from Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and labored for nearly three years over “Daphnis et Chloé.” It premiered in June 1912 with Nijinsky and Karsavina in the leading roles, but amid the conflict between the choreographer Fokine and Diaghilev, the first season saw only a handful of performances. Ravel called it a ‘choreographic symphony,’ and it is the largest in scale of all his works. (Collaboration) In 1913, at Diaghilev's request, he joined Stravinsky in arranging Mussorgsky's unfinished opera “Khovanshchina.” It was then that he heard from Stravinsky about Schoenberg's “Pierrot lunaire,” and, inspired by its instrumentation, he wrote the “Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.” (Trio) In the summer of 1914, while he was writing a piano trio in Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the Basque coast, war broke out. Intent on enlisting, he rushed to finish the remaining parts within a few weeks.
A piece for piano four hands written for the young siblings of the Godebski household. To its simple textures, sized for children's hands, Ravel later added his delicate orchestration.
- In “Petit Poucet,” as the birds peck up the breadcrumbs on the forest path, the violins slide up and down (glissando) and the flute·piccolo sing birdcalls. The ever-changing meter sounds like the hesitant steps of a lost child.
- “Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes” evokes an Eastern atmosphere with a five-note scale that can be played on the piano's black keys alone (pentatonic scale). Listen for the sounds of the celesta·xylophone·gong.
- In “Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête,” the clarinet plays Beauty and the contrabassoon, a very low woodwind, plays the Beast. When the harp sweeps down and a solo violin enters, it is the moment the Beast is transformed into a prince.
- The final “Le jardin féerique” begins with slow strings and swells gradually to a climax that glitters like pealing bells.
A suite drawn from the final scenes of the ballet Ravel labored over for nearly three years for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. It is counted among the works in which his orchestration unfolds most brilliantly.
- In “Lever du jour,” above woodwinds and harps rippling like a brook, the low strings slowly unfold a long melody like the rising sun. Piccolo and solo violin add birdsong.
- The long, free flute solo in “Pantomime” depicts the god Pan playing his reed pipe. It is a perennial fixture of orchestral flute auditions.
- The closing “Danse générale” whirls along in 5/4, counting five beats to the bar. The story goes that dancers who struggled to count the meter kept time by chanting ‘Ser-gei-Dia-ghi-lev’ as five syllables.
- The original score includes a wordless chorus, sung on sounds alone. It is worth comparing recordings with and without the chorus.
V. The war and his mother · 1914–1920 (age 39–45)
(The front) At thirty-nine, Ravel was turned away by the army for being two kilograms underweight. He volunteered as a pilot and was refused again, and only after dogged persistence did he become a military truck driver in March 1916, driving the roads near Verdun. He named his truck 'Adélaïde.' That autumn he came down with dysentery and underwent surgery. (Mother) In January 1917 his mother died. Ravel sank into a deep depression and for a long while could write almost nothing; that June, his health failing, he was discharged. (Tombeau) Completed in 1917, the piano suite “Le Tombeau de Couperin” takes the form of a homage to 18th-century French keyboard music. Each of its six pieces is dedicated to a friend killed in the war, and the final Toccata was laid at the memory of Joseph de Marliave, husband of the pianist Marguerite Long. Asked whether the music was not too bright, he is said to have replied, 'The dead are sad enough in their eternal silence.' (Tribute) In March 1918 Debussy died. For a music journal's memorial issue honoring the elder composer from whom he had drifted apart, Ravel contributed a duo for violin and cello, a piece that later grew into a sonata. (Rupture) In 1919–20 he wrote “La Valse” for Diaghilev. He conceived it as a hymn to the Viennese waltz, but Diaghilev, hearing it played on the piano, called it a masterpiece yet not a ballet, only 'a portrait of a ballet,' and turned it down. The episode broke the two men apart. That same year, when his name appeared without his consent on the list of Légion d'honneur recipients, he refused the decoration.
He completed it in the year he lost his mother and came back from the front. Each piece bears the name of a friend killed in the war, yet the music never parades its grief; it keeps the limpid face of the old dances.
- In the orchestral “Prélude,” the oboe spins out a ceaseless stream of rapid notes. With barely a moment to breathe, the passage is notorious among oboists.
- Of the six piano pieces, Ravel orchestrated only four: “Prélude,” “Forlane,” “Menuet” and “Rigaudon.” Setting the two versions side by side reveals how the colors of the same piece can change.
- The final piece of the piano version, the “Toccata,” is built on the same note struck in rapid succession, making it fiendishly difficult for pianists.
- In the “Rigaudon,” a wistful middle section sung by the oboe is tucked between the lively outer sections. It sounds like a moment when the shadow hidden beneath a bright surface comes into view.
Conceived as a hymn to the Viennese waltz, it sounded different to ears just emerging from the war. Diaghilev's rejection of the piece ended their relationship.
- It begins with the low murmur of divided double basses. As the preface to the score puts it, this is the scene in which 'through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly glimpsed.'
- Ravel set the scene at an imperial court around 1855. The moment the clouds part and the ballroom is revealed, the waltz melody spreads radiantly through the whole orchestra.
- As the piece goes on, the waltz rhythm twists and the sounds tangle until, at the end, everything collapses as if in an explosion. Listeners often think of the First World War and the fall of old Europe, but Ravel himself denied any connection with reality.
- Ravel's own version for two pianos is also often performed. It is worth comparing the colors of the orchestra with the percussive drive of the pianos.
VI. The craftsman of Le Belvédère · 1921–1932 (age 46–57)
(Belvédère) In 1921 he bought 'Le Belvédère,' a small house in Montfort-l'Amaury west of Paris, and settled there. He filled its rooms with Japanese prints, clockwork toys and fake antiques, and kept Siamese cats. Friends, among them his brother Édouard and the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, came to visit every weekend. His income came from his contract with the publisher Durand and from his ever more frequent conducting·performing tours. (Arrangement) In 1922, on a commission from the conductor Koussevitzky, he orchestrated Mussorgsky's piano work “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which has become the most widely performed version today. In 1925 his opera “L'Enfant et les sortilèges,” to a libretto by Colette, premiered in Monte Carlo. (America) His interest in jazz was already evident in the 'Blues' movement of his 1927 Violin Sonata. Beginning in January 1928 he toured the United States and Canada for four months to an enthusiastic welcome, heard jazz in Harlem, and spent time with George Gershwin. (Boléro) After returning home, he wrote “Boléro” on a commission from the dancer Ida Rubinstein. Over a snare drum that repeats the same rhythm (ostinato) to the very end, two melodies grow steadily louder (crescendo), changing only their instruments. This experiment, which Ravel himself called 'orchestral tissue without music,' unexpectedly became his most famous work. (Concertos) In 1929–31 he wrote two piano concertos side by side. One was the “Concerto for the Left Hand,” for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the war. When Wittgenstein played it with changes of his own, the two quarreled bitterly. Of the other, the Concerto in G major, Ravel said he had written it 'in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns.'
An experimental work written on a commission from Rubinstein in the year he returned from his American tour. Ravel said there was no music in it, yet it is the piece most firmly bound to his name.
- The snare drum repeats the same rhythm from beginning to end, starting very softly. Holding that rhythm steady without a waver demands tremendous concentration from the percussionist.
- There are only two melodies. Flute, clarinet, bassoon, saxophone and others take them up in turn, so listen for how differently the same melody sounds on each instrument.
- Midway through comes a passage in which, above the horn, the celesta and two piccolos layer the same melody at different pitches. What you hear is not the individual instruments but a new, organ-like timbre, counted among the crowning achievements of Ravel's orchestration.
- It holds to a single key (C major) throughout, then near the end lurches suddenly into E major, and the accumulated sound ends as if collapsing all at once.
- There is a story that Ravel protested when Toscanini conducted it fast. The tension that builds when a steady tempo is kept is the heart of the piece.
A concerto that blends the jazz he had heard in America with his reverence for Mozart. Its premiere in January 1932 became the last great success he would enjoy on the stage.
- The first movement opens with the crack of a whip-like percussion instrument (slapstick). The piccolo then introduces a jaunty first theme often described as Basque in flavor.
- Throughout the first movement you can find traces of jazz, such as trumpets stopped with an inserted device (mute) and bent, blues-like notes.
- The second movement opens with the piano alone singing a long melody for nearly three minutes. Ravel is said to have confessed that he wrote it two bars at a time, with great effort, keeping Mozart's Clarinet Quintet beside him.
- Late in the second movement, the English horn takes over the same melody while the piano scatters delicate ornaments above it. It is a moment when the roles of soloist and accompaniment are reversed.
- The third movement is short and drives forward at speed. With the piano and winds trading phrases without pause, it is counted among the trickiest movements for players to keep together.
VII. The music in his head · 1932–1937 (age 57–62)
(Accident) In January 1932 the G major Concerto was premiered with Marguerite Long as soloist and Ravel conducting, to great success. That October, a taxi he was riding in Paris was involved in an accident, and he was injured in the face and head. (Aphasia) From the following year, his body and his speech began to fail him. While swimming, his limbs would not obey him, and he could no longer write properly, so that a short letter took him several days. His last work was the song cycle “Don Quichotte à Dulcinée,” begun for a film and finished in 1933. His intellect and musical judgment remained, but he could not carry the music in his head onto paper. (Journey) In 1935, with Ida Rubinstein paying the expenses, he traveled to Spain and Morocco with his friend the sculptor Léon Leyritz. It was his last journey to see again the land where his mother's songs were born. Around that time he is said to have confided to a friend, 'And yet I still have so much music in my head.' (Surgery) In December 1937 the neurosurgeon Clovis Vincent operated on his brain, but no tumor was found. After the operation he briefly regained consciousness, then slipped into a coma, and on December 28 he died at the age of sixty-two. He was buried beside his parents in the cemetery of Levallois-Perret, outside Paris, and his estate passed to his brother Édouard. The nature of his illness has never been determined to this day.
Lesser-known stories
(Factories) For all his image as a delicate Impressionist, Ravel was a man captivated by industrial landscapes. In the summer of 1905, while touring the canals of the Netherlands and Germany by yacht with friends, he wrote to his pupil Maurice Delage, likening the industrial zone along the Rhine to castles of molten iron and blazing cathedrals and marveling at the symphony of belts and whistles. The letter is often cited in support of readings that link the mechanical repetition of “Boléro” to the rhythms of the factory. (Conviction) In 1916, while at the front, Ravel declined by letter an invitation to join the 'National League for the Defense of French Music,' which sought to bar performances of German·Austrian music. His reason was that by shunning foreign composers such as Schoenberg or Bartók, French music would only be shutting itself in. Written at a time of feverish patriotism, this letter tends to be passed over quickly in biographies, overshadowed by the story of the truck driver. (Diagnosis) His final illness survives as a case the neurologist Théophile Alajouanine reported to the medical community in 1948 as 'a musician with aphasia.' He did not give the name, but the patient was Ravel. Neurologists today point to degenerative conditions such as frontotemporal dementia, and many believe the illness began even before the taxi accident. A hypothesis has also been put forward that the repetitions of “Boléro” bear traces of early symptoms, but the evidence is thin and scholars treat it with caution.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Orchestration
(Etymology) Gwanhyeonak (管絃樂) ('pipe-and-string music') is music made with gwan (管), the pipes, that is, wind instruments sounded by blowing, and hyeon (絃), the strings, that is, instruments whose strings are bowed or plucked; in other words, orchestral music. Gwanhyeonakbeop ('the method of pipe-and-string music') means the way such music is put together, and in the West it is called orchestration. (In music) It is the art of deciding which melody to give to which instrument and which instruments to sound together. The same melody sounds clear and light when sung by a flute, deep and warm when sung by a cello. It is much like a school play, where the feel of the whole production changes completely depending on which friend is given which role from the same script. Ravel is regarded as a master of this art, and his orchestration of Mussorgsky's piano work “Pictures at an Exhibition” is especially famous. (Elsewhere) In computing, orchestration can also refer to the automated coordination and management of multiple servers and programs so that they run smoothly together.
Pavane
(In music) A slow, stately dance performed at European courts in the 16th and 17th centuries, or the music written for it. Couples danced it walking slowly, as if in procession, and the music usually flows calmly in duple time. Picture graduates at a commencement filing in slowly, keeping step with the music, and you have something like the gait of the pavane. Ravel's “Pavane pour une infante défunte” borrows the slow tread of this old dance to evoke an antique atmosphere.
Suite
(Meaning of the word) The Korean name, moeumgok ('gathered pieces'), means a piece made by gathering several pieces together. The Western name, suite, comes from the French for 'that which follows, a succession,' and describes small pieces filing one after another. (In music) A work that binds several short pieces into a single set. In earlier times it most often took the form of a chain of dances; in the modern era, composers also gathered the best scenes from a ballet or opera into a version for the concert hall. It is rather like picking your favorite songs to make a single playlist. Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin is a piano suite in six pieces, and the Daphnis et Chloé suites are made of scenes drawn from the ballet. (Elsewhere) A hotel suite comes from the same word: a set of connected rooms that together form one lodging.
Toccata
(Meaning of the word) It comes from the Italian toccare, 'to touch, to strike.' The very motion of fingers tapping the keys is held in the name. (In music) A piece for keyboard written to show off rapid, dazzling finger work. Its hallmark is a ceaseless stream of fast notes, so many toccatas are tests of a performer's technique. Think of a fiendishly hard track in a rhythm game, where you must keep tapping a torrent of notes without missing a single one. The toccata that closes Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin is famous for its difficulty, full of rapid hammering on the same note again and again.
Ostinato
(Meaning of the word) In Italian it means 'stubborn, obstinate.' The image of doggedly repeating one thing is built into the name. (In music) A short rhythm or melodic fragment repeated over and over as a piece goes on. Other melodies may change and grow above it, but the ostinato keeps repeating steadfastly, like a floor beneath them. It is like a field-day cheer, where the clapping — clap-clap, clap-clap-clap — goes on and on while different chants change over the top of it. The snare drum in Ravel's Boléro, repeating the same rhythm from beginning to end, is the classic ostinato.
Crescendo
(Meaning of the word) It comes from the Italian crescere, 'to grow,' and means 'growing.' The picture of a sound growing is held in the name. (In music) An instruction to make the sound gradually louder. In the score it is written out in words or marked with a hairpin that opens to one side (<). It is like the cheering at a field day that swells as the runners near the finish line. Ravel's Boléro consists of one enormous crescendo: the whole piece begins at the softest whisper and does nothing but grow louder to the very end. (Elsewhere) In everyday writing it is also used figuratively for events or emotions that build steadily toward a climax.
Concerto
(Meaning of the word) 協奏曲 (hyeopjugok) means a piece played (奏) together (協). The Latin root of the Western name concerto, concertare, also carries the sense 'to contend,' so the character of this music — soloist and orchestra trading phrases as if in a contest — is already present in the name. (In music) A piece in which a single solo instrument, such as a piano or violin, plays together with an orchestra. Passages where the soloist shows off their skill alternate with passages where the orchestra supports or opposes them. It is like a class choral competition, where the friend chosen as soloist sings a line and the whole class picks it up and sings on. Ravel wrote two piano concertos in 1929~31, one of them for a pianist who played with the left hand alone.