[Ravel in 1912)
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 - December 28, 1937) was a Basque French composer 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. According to international copyright law, Ravel's works are public domain since January 1, 2008 in most countries. In France, due to its anomalous copyright law extensions to account for the two world wars, they will not enter the public domain until 2015.
Ravel was born in Ciboure, France, near Biarritz. His mother, Marie Delouart, was French, while his father, Joseph Ravel, was a Swiss inventor and industrialist. Some of Joseph'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 1900's. 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 1900's, 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 14 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.
Pavane for a Dead Princess (1899)
Mother Goose (1909)
I. Pavanne for the Sleeping Princess in the Woods
II. Tom Thumb
III. The Princess of the Pagodas
IV. Dialogues Between Beauty and the Beast
V. Enchanted Garden
***
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 Ravel the Légion d'honneur, but he refused it. 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.
There is a story that when George Gershwin met Ravel, the American 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, some have claimed it was with Igor Stravinsky) In any event, this had to have been before Ravel wrote Boléro which became financially very successful for him.
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 association 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 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 25 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."
Bolero (1928) (Beginning)
Ravel made one of his few recordings when he conducted his Boléro with the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1930. He also made a number of recordings of his piano music. 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 is possible he merely supervised the recording.
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D (1930) was composed on commission for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in WWI. The pianist was the brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Concerto for the Left Hand (1930)
Piano Concerto in G (1931)
Ravel made extensive use of rollicking jazz tunes in his Piano Concerto in G, even employing a whip for special effects in the first and second movements.
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, Adventures of Don Quixote (1933) from Cervantes's celebrated novel, featuring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and directed by G. W. Pabst.
When Ravel became unable to compose, and could not write down the musical ideas he heard in his mind, Pabst hired Jacques Ibert. However, three songs for baritone and orchestra that Ravel composed for the film were later published under the title Don Quichotte a Dulcinée, and have been performed and recorded.
On April 8, 2008, the New York Times published an article saying Ravel may have been in the early stages of frontotemporal dementia in 1928, and this might account for the repetitive nature of Boléro.
his is in line with an earlier article, published in a journal of neurology, that closely examines Ravel's clinical history and argues that his works Boléro and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand both indicate the impacts of neurological disease.
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 afterwards. He did not die from a brain tumor, as some believe. He is buried in Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris.
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 seventh degree, instead of major, and the Aeolian (natural) 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 appoggiatura. His piano music, some of which is noted for its technical challenges 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. In reality Ravel is much more than an Impressionist (it is worth noting that both Ravel and Debussy rejected this description of their styles).
Ravel crafted his manuscripts meticulously. 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.
Active in a period of great artistic innovations and diversification, Ravel benefited from many influences, though his music defies any facile classification. Like Debussy, Ravel categorically refused this description which he believed was reserved exclusively for painting.
Ravel was very open to influences and was a remarkable synthesist of disparate styles. He variously cited Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Schubert, and Schoenberg as inspirations for various 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.
[8876 Falla / 8875 Ravel / 8874 Ives]