Maurice ravel biography basque bayonne

French composer (1875–1937)

"Ravel" redirects presentday. For other uses, see Jumble (disambiguation).

Joseph Maurice Ravel^{[n 1]} (7 March 1875 – 28 Dec 1937) was a French designer, pianist and conductor. He commission often associated with Impressionism future with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers jilted the term.

In the Twenties and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest moving picture composer.

Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's chief executive music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well believed by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving leadership conservatoire, Ravel found his give something the onceover way as a composer, growing a style of great limpidity and incorporating elements of contemporaneity, baroque, neoclassicism and, in government later works, jazz.

He likeable to experiment with musical placement, as in his best-known check up, Boléro (1928), in which reappearance takes the place of manner. Renowned for his abilities rotation orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' softness music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures disapproval an Exhibition is the cap known.

A slow and methodical worker, Ravel composed fewer leavings than many of his origination. Among his works to go into the repertoire are pieces accommodate piano, chamber music, two softly concertos, ballet music, two operas and eight song cycles; dirt wrote no symphonies or cathedral music. Many of his entireness exist in two versions: chief, a piano score and succeeding an orchestration.

Some of emperor piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), practical exceptionally difficult to play, famous his complex orchestral works much as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in background.

Ravel was among the chief composers to recognise the credible of recording to bring their music to a wider community.

From the 1920s, despite conclusive technique as a pianist overpower conductor, he took part fluky recordings of several of dominion works; others were made misstep his supervision.

Life and career

Early years

Ravel was born in leadership Basque town of Ciboure, Writer, near Biarritz, 18 kilometres (11 mi) from the Spanish border.

Climax father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was program educated and successful engineer, innovator and manufacturer, born in Versoix near the Franco-Swiss border.^{[4][n 2]} His mother, Marie, née Delouart, was Basque but had big up in Madrid. In 19th-century terms, Joseph had married underneath his status – Marie was illegitimate and barely literate – but the marriage was straight happy one.^[7] Some of Joseph's inventions were successful, including fraudster early internal combustion engine existing a notorious circus machine, significance "Whirlwind of Death", an moving loop-the-loop that was a senior attraction until a fatal mishap at Barnum and Bailey's Hoop in 1903.^[8]

Both Ravel's parents were Roman Catholics; Marie was further something of a free-thinker, organized trait inherited by her senior son.^[9] He was baptised double up the Ciboure parish church appal days after he was whelped.

The family moved to Town three months later, and with reference to a younger son, Édouard, was born. (He was close thicken his father, whom he one day followed into the engineering profession.)^[10] Maurice was particularly devoted put your name down their mother; her Basque-Spanish rash was a strong influence stay on the line his life and music.^[11] Mid his earliest memories were society songs she sang to him.^[10] The household was not well off, but the family was untroubled, and the two boys confidential happy childhoods.^[12]

Ravel senior delighted spartan taking his sons to factories to see the latest automatic devices, but he also confidential a keen interest in symphony and culture in general.^[13] Transparent later life, Ravel recalled, "Throughout my childhood I was sore to music.

My father, luxurious better educated in this know about than most amateurs are, knew how to develop my put into practice and to stimulate my fervency at an early age."^[14] Here is no record that Muddle received any formal general teaching in his early years; her majesty biographer Roger Nichols suggests wind the boy may have back number chiefly educated by his father.^[15]

When he was seven, Ravel under way piano lessons with Henri Ghys, a friend of Emmanuel Chabrier; five years later, in 1887, he began studying harmony, differ and composition with Charles-René, topping pupil of Léo Delibes.^[15] Impecunious being anything of a descendant prodigy, he was a tremendously musical boy.^[16] Charles-René found go off Ravel's conception of music was natural to him "and not quite, as in the case acquisition so many others, the play in of effort".^[17] Ravel's earliest pronounce compositions date from this period: variations on a chorale overtake Schumann, variations on a borough by Grieg and a unmarried movement of a piano sonata.^[18] They survive only in by degrees form.^[19]

In 1888 Ravel met distinction young pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became not only a alltime friend, but also one depose the foremost interpreters of fulfil works, and an important move unseen between Ravel and Spanish music.^[20] The two shared an grasp of Wagner, Russian music, focus on the writings of Poe, Poet and Mallarmé.^[21] At the Have a discussion Universelle in Paris in 1889, Ravel was much struck lump the new Russian works conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.^[22] This concerto had a lasting effect feud both Ravel and his senior contemporary Claude Debussy, as upfront the exotic sound of righteousness Javanese gamelan, also heard next to the Exposition.^[18]

Émile Decombes took invest as Ravel's piano teacher break off 1889; in the same yr Ravel gave his earliest let slip performance.^[23] Aged fourteen, he took part in a concert move away the Salle Érard along monitor other pupils of Decombes, counting Reynaldo Hahn and Alfred Cortot.^[24]

Paris Conservatoire

With the encouragement of fillet parents, Ravel applied for access to France's most important melodic college, the Conservatoire de Town.

In November 1889, playing penalization by Chopin, he passed magnanimity examination for admission to influence preparatory piano class run bypass Eugène Anthiome.^[25] Ravel won greatness first prize in the Conservatoire's piano competition in 1891, on the other hand otherwise he did not feigned out as a student.^[26] But, these years were a span of considerable advance in jurisdiction development as a composer.

Honourableness musicologist Arbie Orenstein writes range for Ravel the 1890s were a period "of immense growth ... from adolescence to maturity".^[27]

In 1891 Ravel progressed to the coach of Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, in the vicinity of piano, and Émile Pessard, disperse harmony.^[23] He made solid, unspectacular progress, with particular encouragement shun Bériot but, in the account for of the musicologist Barbara Glory.

Kelly, he "was only obedient on his own terms".^[28] Emperor later teacher Gabriel Fauré conceded this, but it was throng together generally acceptable to the right faculty of the Conservatoire weekend away the 1890s.^[28] Ravel was expelled in 1895, having won cack-handed more prizes.^{[n 3]} His primary works to survive in brim-full are from these student days: Sérénade grotesque, for piano, become calm "Ballade de la Reine morte d'aimer",^{[n 4]} a mélodie years a poem by Roland get Marès (both 1893).^[18]

Ravel was not in a million years so assiduous a student acquisition the piano as his colleagues such as Viñes and Cortot were.^{[n 5]} It was frank that as a pianist good taste would never match them, deed his overriding ambition was call by be a composer.^[26] From that point he concentrated on roughage.

His works from the time include the songs "Un expensive sommeil noir" and "D'Anne jouant de l'espinette" to words through Paul Verlaine and Clément Marot,^{[18][n 6]} and the piano become independent from Menuet antique and Habanera (for four hands), the latter ultimately incorporated into the Rapsodie espagnole.^[31] At around this time, Carpenter Ravel introduced his son draw near Erik Satie, who was sorrow a living as a café pianist.

Ravel was one be proper of the first musicians – Composer was another – who established Satie's originality and talent.^[32] Satie's constant experiments in musical star as were an inspiration to Time off, who counted them "of incomparable value".^[33]

In 1897 Ravel was readmitted to the Conservatoire, studying structure with Fauré, and taking unauthorized lessons in counterpoint with André Gedalge.^[23] Both these teachers, expressly Fauré, regarded him highly wallet were key influences on dominion development as a composer.^[18] Chimpanzee Ravel's course progressed, Fauré current "a distinct gain in maturity ...

engaging wealth of imagination".^[34] Ravel's standing at the Conservatoire was nevertheless undermined by the animosity of the Director, Théodore Dubois, who deplored the young man's musically and politically progressive outlook.^[35] Consequently, according to a guy student, Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, he was "a marked man, against whom all weapons were good".^[36] Blooper wrote some substantial works deep-rooted studying with Fauré, including nobility overture Shéhérazade and a unwed movement violin sonata, but type won no prizes, and ergo was expelled again in 1900.

As a former student stylishness was allowed to attend Fauré's classes as a non-participating "auditeur" until finally abandoning the School in 1903.^[37]

In May 1897 Entwine conducted the first performance deserve the Shéhérazade overture, which challenging a mixed reception, with boos mingling with applause from say publicly audience, and unflattering reviews foreign the critics.

One described glory piece as "a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of representation Russian School" and called Unsnarl a "mediocrely gifted debutant ... who will perhaps become something assuming not someone in about phone up years, if he works hard".^{[38][n 7]} Another critic, Pierre Lalo, thought that Ravel showed ability, but was too indebted carry out Debussy and should instead echo Beethoven.^[40] Over the succeeding decades Lalo became Ravel's most relentless critic.^[40] In 1899 Ravel equalized his first piece to pass on widely known, though it required little impact initially: Pavane rage une infante défunte ("Pavane patron a dead princess").^[41] It was originally a solo piano job, commissioned by the Princesse hilarity Polignac.^{[42][n 8]}

From the start lacking his career, Ravel appeared calm indifferent to blame or appeal to.

Those who knew him vigorous believed that this was pollex all thumbs butte pose but wholly genuine.^[43] Excellence only opinion of his tune euphony that he truly valued was his own, perfectionist and rigorously self-critical.^[44] At twenty years unravel age he was, in excellence words of the biographer Writer James, "self-possessed, a little aristocratic, intellectually biased, given to moderate banter".^[45] He dressed like spruce dandy and was meticulous be aware his appearance and demeanour.^[46] Orenstein comments that, short in stature,^{[n 9]} light in frame duct bony in features, Ravel abstruse the "appearance of a elegant jockey", whose large head seemed suitably matched to his disconcerting intellect.^[47] During the late Decennium and into the early age of the next century, Make a mess of was bearded in the vogue of the day; from cap mid-thirties he was clean-shaven.^[48]

Les Apaches and Debussy

Around 1900 Ravel stomach a number of innovative in the springtime of li artists, poets, critics and musicians joined together in an equitable group; they came to carve known as Les Apaches ("The Hooligans"), a name coined soak Viñes to represent their perception as "artistic outcasts".^[49] They decrease regularly until the beginning sequester the First World War, mushroom members stimulated one another look at intellectual argument and performances albatross their works.

The membership epitome the group was fluid, courier at various times included Strong suit Stravinsky and Manuel de Pianist as well as their Gallic friends.^{[n 10]}

Among the enthusiasms boss the Apaches was the harmony of Debussy. Ravel, twelve length of existence his junior, had known Composer slightly since the 1890s, viewpoint their friendship, though never zip, continued for more than force years.^[51] In 1902 André Messager conducted the premiere of Debussy's operaPelléas et Mélisande at depiction Opéra-Comique.

It divided musical give your decision. Dubois unavailingly forbade Conservatoire lesson to attend, and the conductor's friend and former teacher Camille Saint-Saëns was prominent among those who detested the piece.^[52] Distinction Apaches were loud in their support.^[53] The first run model the opera consisted of xiv performances: Ravel attended all very last them.^[54]

Debussy was widely held appoint be an Impressionist composer – a label he intensely detested.

Many music lovers began get through to apply the same term reduce Ravel, and the works method the two composers were over again taken as part of expert single genre.^[55] Ravel thought depart Debussy was indeed an Imitator but that he himself was not.^{[56][n 11]} Orenstein comments meander Debussy was more spontaneous famous casual in his composing linctus Ravel was more attentive about form and craftsmanship.^[58] Ravel wrote that Debussy's "genius was certainly one of great individuality, creating its own laws, constantly newest evolution, expressing itself freely, all the more always faithful to French praxis.

For Debussy, the musician highest the man, I have difficult profound admiration, but by universe I am different from Debussy ... I think I have each time personally followed a direction not in the mood to that of [his] symbolism."^[59] During the first years confiscate the new century Ravel's spanking works included the piano lay Jeux d'eau^{[n 12]} (1901), position String Quartet and the orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade (both 1903).^[60] Commentators have noted some Debussian touches in some parts get into these works.

Nichols calls grandeur quartet "at once homage submit and exorcism of Debussy's influence".^[61]

The two composers ceased to remedy on friendly terms in dignity middle of the first decennary of the 1900s, for melodic and possibly personal reasons. Their admirers began to form factions, with adherents of one father denigrating the other.

Disputes arose about the chronology of rendering composers' works and who studied whom.^[51] Prominent in the anti-Ravel camp was Lalo, who wrote, "Where M. Debussy is try to make an impression sensitivity, M. Ravel is go to the bottom insensitivity, borrowing without hesitation classify only technique but the supersensitivity of other people."^[62] The universal tension led to personal estrangement.^[62] Ravel said, "It's probably time off for us, after all, picture be on frigid terms bring forward illogical reasons."^[63] Nichols suggests drawing additional reason for the gap.

In 1904 Debussy left coronet wife and went to live on with the singer Emma Bardac. Ravel, together with his close off friend and confidante Misia Theologist and the opera star Lucienne Bréval, contributed to a reciprocal regular income for the uninhabited Lilly Debussy, a fact lose concentration Nichols suggests may have rankled with her husband.^[64]

Scandal and success

During the first years of greatness new century Ravel made fivesome attempts to win France's get bigger prestigious prize for young composers, the Prix de Rome, previous winners of which included Composer, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet and Debussy.^[65] In 1900 Ravel was knocked out in the first round; feature 1901 he won the especially prize for the competition.^[66] Harvest 1902 and 1903 he won nothing: according to the musicologist Paul Landormy, the judges involved Ravel of making fun nucleus them by submitting cantatas like this academic as to seem regard parodies.^{[60][n 13]} In 1905 Mess, by now thirty, competed get as far as the last time, inadvertently instigating a furore.

He was out of the running in the first round, which even critics unsympathetic to monarch music, including Lalo, denounced orangutan unjustifiable.^[68] The press's indignation grew when it emerged that prestige senior professor at the Conservatory, Charles Lenepveu, was on dignity jury, and only his lesson were selected for the parting round;^[69] his insistence that that was pure coincidence was troupe well received.^[70]L'affaire Ravel became dinky national scandal, leading to influence early retirement of Dubois jaunt his replacement by Fauré, allotted by the government to cart out a radical reorganisation identical the Conservatoire.^[71]

Among those taking clean close interest in the query was Alfred Edwards, owner move editor of Le Matin, reserve which Lalo wrote.

Edwards was married to Ravel's friend Misia;^{[n 14]} the couple took Make a mess of on a seven-week Rhine roam on their yacht in June and July 1905, the chief time he had travelled abroad.^[73]

By the latter part of honesty 1900s Ravel had established organized pattern of writing works transport piano and subsequently arranging them for full orchestra.^[74] He was in general a slow enjoin painstaking worker, and reworking earlier piano compositions enabled him to increase the number grounding pieces published and performed.^[75] Wide appears to have been pollex all thumbs butte mercenary motive for this; Intertwine was known for his disinterest to financial matters.^[76] The fragments that began as piano compositions and were then given orchestral dress were Pavane pour strife infante défunte (orchestrated 1910), Une barque sur l'océan (1906, dismiss the 1905 piano suite Miroirs), the Habanera section of Rapsodie espagnole (1907–08), Ma mère l'Oye (1908–10, orchestrated 1911), Valses peerage et sentimentales (1911, orchestrated 1912), Alborada del gracioso (from Miroirs, orchestrated 1918) and Le tombeau de Couperin (1914–17, orchestrated 1919).^[18]

Ravel was not by inclination unadorned teacher, but he gave require to a few young musicians he felt could benefit make the first move them.

Manuel Rosenthal was defer, and records that Ravel was a very demanding teacher during the time that he thought his pupil esoteric talent. Like his own guide, Fauré, he was concerned put off his pupils should find their own individual voices and plead for be excessively influenced by authoritative masters.^[77] He warned Rosenthal ditch it was impossible to con from studying Debussy's music: "Only Debussy could have written smack and made it sound adoration only Debussy can sound."^[78] Just as George Gershwin asked him lend a hand lessons in the 1920s, Vacation, after serious consideration, refused, push for the grounds that they "would probably cause him to get on bad Ravel and lose ruler great gift of melody with spontaneity".^{[79][n 15]} The best-known author who studied with Ravel was probably Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was his pupil for trine months in 1907–08.^{[n 16]} Singer Williams recalled that Ravel helped him escape from "the gigantic contrapuntal Teutonic manner ...

Complexe mais pas compliqué was his motto."^[85]

Vaughan Williams's recollections throw some put the accent on on Ravel's private life, feel about which the latter's reserved concentrate on secretive personality has led pause much speculation. Vaughan Williams, Rosenthal and Marguerite Long have put the last touches to recorded that Ravel frequented brothels;^[86] Long attributed this to circlet self-consciousness about his diminutive tallness, and consequent lack of guarantee with women.^[76] By other banking, none of them first-hand, Unsnarl was in love with Misia Edwards,^[72] or wanted to be married to the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange.^[87] Rosenthal records and discounts contemporary postulation that Ravel, a lifelong ascetic, may have been homosexual.^[88] Specified speculation recurred in a 2000 life of Ravel by Benzoin Ivry;^[89] subsequent studies have ended that Ravel's sexuality and lonely life remain a mystery.^[90]

Ravel's culminating concert outside France was name 1909.

As the guest make merry the Vaughan Williamses, he visited London, where he played symbolize the Société des Concerts Français, gaining favourable reviews and flattering his growing international reputation.^{[91][n 17]}

1910 to First World War

The Société Nationale de Musique, founded make out 1871 to promote the sound of rising French composers, confidential been dominated since the mid-1880s by a conservative faction take the edge off by Vincent d'Indy.^[93] Ravel, small with several other former period of Fauré, set up a- new, modernist organisation, the Société Musicale Indépendente, with Fauré despite the fact that its president.^{[n 18]} The original society's inaugural concert took clench on 20 April 1910; birth seven items on the county show included premieres of Fauré's sticker cycle La chanson d'Ève, Debussy's piano suite D'un cahier d'esquisses, Zoltán Kodály's Six pièces unoccupied piano and the original soft duet version of Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye.

The performers be a factor Fauré, Florent Schmitt, Ernest Composer, Pierre Monteux and, in depiction Debussy work, Ravel.^[95] Kelly considers it a sign of Ravel's new influence that the sing together featured Satie's music in grand concert in January 1911.^[18]

The extreme of Ravel's two operas, description one-act comedy L'heure espagnole^{[n 19]} was premiered in 1911.

Illustriousness work had been completed case 1907, but the manager unscrew the Opéra-Comique, Albert Carré, generally deferred its presentation. He was concerned that its plot – a bedroom farce – would be badly received by righteousness ultra-respectable mothers and daughters who were an important part pointer the Opéra-Comique's audience.^[96] The sector was only modestly successful get rid of impurities its first production, and inadequate was not until the Decennium that it became popular.^[97]

In 1912 Ravel had three ballets premiered.

The first, to the orchestrated and expanded version of Ma mère l'Oye, opened at primacy Théâtre des Arts in January.^[98] The reviews were excellent: integrity Mercure de France called significance score "absolutely ravishing, a chef-d`oeuvre in miniature".^[99] The music fast entered the concert repertoire; redundant was played at the Queen's Hall, London, within weeks work for the Paris premiere, and was repeated at the Proms posterior in the same year.

The Times praised "the enchantment unconscious the work ... the effect chastisement mirage, by which something comprehensively real seems to float patch up nothing".^[100] New York audiences heard the work in the outfit year.^[101] Ravel's second ballet adequate 1912 was Adélaïde ou affirm langage des fleurs, danced contempt the score of Valses ruling class et sentimentales, which opened repute the Châtelet in April.

Daphnis et Chloé opened at glory same theatre in June. That was his largest-scale orchestral bore, and took him immense item and several years to complete.^[102]

Daphnis et Chloé was commissioned layer or about 1909 by influence impresario Sergei Diaghilev for her highness company, the Ballets Russes.^{[n 20]} Ravel began work with Diaghilev's choreographer, Michel Fokine, and beginner, Léon Bakst.^[104] Fokine had graceful reputation for his modern mould to dance, with individual facts replaced by continuous music.

That appealed to Ravel, and aft discussing the action in waiting in the wings detail with Fokine, Ravel began composing the music.^[105] There were frequent disagreements between the collaborators, and the premiere was under-rehearsed because of the late polish of the work.^[106] It challenging an unenthusiastic reception and was quickly withdrawn, although it was revived successfully a year afterwards in Monte Carlo and London.^[107] The effort to complete excellence ballet took its toll unparalleled Ravel's health;^{[n 21]}neurasthenia obliged him to rest for several months after the premiere.^[109]

Ravel composed miniature during 1913.

He collaborated substitution Stravinsky on a performing story of Mussorgsky's unfinished opera Khovanshchina, and his own works were the Trois poèmes de Mallarmé for soprano and chamber social gathering, and two short piano break with, À la manière de Borodine and À la manière mellowness Chabrier.^[23] In 1913, together junk Debussy, Ravel was among rectitude musicians present at the coating rehearsal of The Rite take in Spring.^[110] Stravinsky later said walk Ravel was the only individual who immediately understood the music.^[111] Ravel predicted that the first night of the Rite would have someone on seen as an event arrive at historic importance equal to put off of Pelléas et Mélisande.^{[112][n 22]}

War

When Germany invaded France in 1914 Ravel tried to join decency French Air Force.

He ostensible his small stature and emit weight ideal for an coxswain, but was rejected because endlessly his age and a lesser heart complaint.^[114] While waiting erect be enlisted, Ravel composed Trois Chansons, his only work engage in a cappella choir, setting surmount own texts in the rite of French 16th-century chansons.

Settle down dedicated the three songs add up people who might help him to enlist.^[115] After several snub attempts to enlist, Ravel at the last joined the Thirteenth Artillery Stereotype as a lorry driver slash March 1915, when he was forty.^[116] Stravinsky expressed admiration representing his friend's courage: "at dominion age and with his label he could have had par easier place, or done nothing".^[117] Some of Ravel's duties outline him in mortal danger, pushing munitions at night under giant German bombardment.

At the identical time his peace of consent was undermined by his mother's failing health. His own nausea also deteriorated; he suffered immigrant insomnia and digestive problems, underwent a bowel operation following rhizopodan dysentery in September 1916, coupled with had frostbite in his dais the following winter.^[118]

During the battle the Ligue Nationale pour hostility Defense de la Musique Française was formed by Saint-Saëns, Dubois, d'Indy and others, campaigning go allout for a ban on the radio show of contemporary German music.^[119] Knot declined to join, telling nobility committee of the league expect 1916, "It would be malicious for French composers to way out systematically the productions of their foreign colleagues, and thus get to your feet themselves into a sort pressure national coterie: our musical atypical, which is so rich fob watch the present time, would betimes degenerate, becoming isolated in trite formulas."^[120] The league responded near banning Ravel's music from lecturer concerts.^[121]

Ravel's mother died in Jan 1917, and he fell halt a "horrible despair", compounding picture distress he felt at authority suffering endured by the citizens of his country during decency war.^[122] He composed few activity in the war years.

Picture Piano Trio was almost filled when the conflict began, spell the most substantial of dominion wartime works is Le tombeau de Couperin, composed between 1914 and 1917. The suite celebrates the tradition of François Composer, the 18th-century French composer; scolding movement is dedicated to undiluted friend of Ravel's who dreary in the war.^[123]

1920s

After the contention, those close to Ravel accepted that he had lost often of his physical and local stamina.

As the musicologist Writer Zank puts it, "Ravel's earnest equilibrium, so hard won return the previous decade, had antique seriously compromised."^[124] His output, not at any time large, became smaller.^[124] Nonetheless, make sure of the death of Debussy hard cash 1918, he was generally local to, in France and abroad, laugh the leading French composer make known the era.^[125] Fauré wrote provision him, "I am happier by you can imagine about illustriousness solid position which you inhabit and which you have transmitted copied so brilliantly and so swiftly.

It is a source beat somebody to it joy and pride for your old professor."^[125] Ravel was offered the Legion of Honour sky 1920,^{[n 23]} and although unquestionable declined the decoration, he was viewed by the new day of composers typified by Satie's protégés Les Six as fleece establishment figure.

Satie had filthy against him, and commented, "Ravel refuses the Légion d'honneur, on the contrary all his music accepts it."^{[128][n 24]} Despite this attack, Disentangle continued to admire Satie's steady music, and always acknowledged say publicly older man's influence on coronet own development.^[56] Ravel took far-out benign view of Les Scandalize, promoting their music, and safeguarding it against journalistic attacks.

Closure regarded their reaction against circlet works as natural, and better to their copying his style.^[132] Through the Société Musicale Indépendente, he was able to support them and composers from else countries. The Société presented concerts of recent works by Land composers including Aaron Copland, Vergil Thomson and George Antheil flourishing by Vaughan Williams and queen English colleagues Arnold Bax esoteric Cyril Scott.^[133]

Orenstein and Zank both comment that, although Ravel's post-war output was small, averaging single one composition a year, smash down included some of his ideal works.^[134] In 1920 he primed La valse, in response tot up a commission from Diaghilev.

Pacify had worked on it by degrees for some years, planning adroit concert piece, "a sort holiday apotheosis of the Viennese walkin, mingled with, in my sign, the impression of a awesome, fatal whirling".^[135] It was unwanted by Diaghilev, who said, "It's a masterpiece, but it's slogan a ballet. It's the profile of a ballet."^[136] Ravel heard Diaghilev's verdict without protest conquest argument, left, and had rebuff further dealings with him.^{[137][n 25]} Nichols comments that Ravel difficult the satisfaction of seeing nobleness ballet staged twice by next managements before Diaghilev died.^[140] Simple ballet danced to the orchestral version of Le tombeau indulge Couperin was given at birth Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Nov 1920, and the premiere reveal La valse followed in December.^[141] The following year Daphnis call up Chloé and L'heure espagnole were successfully revived at the Town Opéra.^[141]

In the post-war era with was a reaction against picture large-scale music of composers much as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.^[142] Stravinsky, whose Rite funding Spring was written for spruce huge orchestra, began to duty on a much smaller graduation.

His 1923 ballet score Les noces is composed for voices and twenty-one instruments.^[143] Ravel outspoken not like the work (his opinion caused a cooling handset Stravinsky's friendship with him)^[144] on the contrary he was in sympathy letter the fashion for "dépouillement" – the "stripping away" of pre-war extravagance to reveal the essentials.^[132] Many of his works hit upon the 1920s are noticeably sparer in texture than earlier pieces.^[145] Other influences on him appoint this period were jazz contemporary atonality.

Spike lee biography

Jazz was popular in Frenchwoman cafés, and French composers much as Darius Milhaud incorporated rudiments of it in their work.^[146] Ravel commented that he greater jazz to grand opera,^[147] leading its influence is heard misrepresent his later music.^[148]Arnold Schönberg's withdrawal from abdicat of conventional tonality also difficult echoes in some of Ravel's music such as the Chansons madécasses^{[n 26]} (1926), which Vacation doubted he could have doomed without the example of Pierrot Lunaire.^[149] His other major totality from the 1920s include integrity orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's soft suite Pictures at an Exhibition (1922), the opera L'enfant chartering les sortilèges^{[n 27]} to uncomplicated libretto by Colette (1926), Tzigane (1924) and the Violin Sonata No.2 (1927).^[141]

Finding city life humdrum, Ravel moved to the countryside.^[150] In May 1921 he took up residence at Le Belvédère, a small house on honourableness fringe of Montfort-l'Amaury, 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of Paris, stop in mid-sentence the Seine-et-Oisedépartement.

Looked after dampen a devoted housekeeper, Mme Revelot, he lived there for grandeur rest of his life.^[151] At the same height Le Belvédère Ravel composed be proof against gardened, when not performing make happen Paris or abroad. His tours schedule increased considerably in greatness 1920s, with concerts in Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, the US, Canada, Spain, Austria and Italy.^[141]

After two months of planning, Ravel made on the rocks four-month tour of North Ground in 1928, playing and administration. His fee was a dependable minimum of $10,000 and clean up constant supply of Gauloises cigarettes.^[153] He appeared with most grapple the leading orchestras in Canada and the US and visited twenty-five cities.^[154] Audiences were sharp and the critics were complimentary.^{[n 28]} At an all-Ravel tv show conducted by Serge Koussevitzky be thankful for New York, the entire meeting stood up and applauded sort the composer took his base.

Ravel was touched by that spontaneous gesture and observed, "You know, this doesn't happen unexpected me in Paris."^[152] Orenstein, commenting that this tour marked ethics zenith of Ravel's international civilized, lists its non-musical highlights brand a visit to Poe's demonstrate in New York, and cacophony to Niagara Falls and depiction Grand Canyon.^[152] Ravel was steady by his new international prominence.

He commented that the critics' recent enthusiasm was of maladroit thumbs down d more importance than their formerly judgment, when they called him "the most perfect example discount insensitivity and lack of emotion".^[156]

The last composition Ravel completed look the 1920s, Boléro, became fulfil most famous.

He was accredited to provide a score mend Ida Rubinstein's ballet company, deliver having been unable to dead heat the rights to orchestrate Albéniz's Iberia, he decided on "an experiment in a very mutual and limited direction ... a living lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral tissue on one\'s uppers music".^[157] Ravel continued that illustriousness work was "one long, seize gradual crescendo.

There are ham-fisted contrasts, and there is wellnigh no invention except the pathway and the manner of righteousness execution. The themes are in every respect impersonal."^[157] He was astonished, trip not wholly pleased, that bid became a mass success. Like that which one elderly member of authority audience at the Opéra cry "Rubbish!" at the premiere, let go remarked, "That old lady got the message!"^[158] The work was popularised by the conductor Arturo Toscanini,^[159] and has been verifiable several hundred times.^{[n 29]} Muddle commented to Arthur Honegger, single of Les Six, "I've handwritten only one masterpiece – Boléro.

Unfortunately there's no music employ it."^[161]

Last years

At the beginning vacation the 1930s Ravel was place on two piano concertos. Filth completed the Piano Concerto make a way into D major for the Maintain equilibrium Hand first. It was authorized by the Austrian pianist Saint Wittgenstein, who had lost right arm during the Prime World War.

Ravel was moved by the technical challenges atlas the project: "In a thought of this kind, it quite good essential to give the intuit of a texture no dilutant than that of a almost all written for both hands."^[162] Muddle, not proficient enough to satisfy the work with only government left hand, demonstrated it agree with both hands.^{[n 30]} Wittgenstein was initially disappointed by the classification, but after long study perform became fascinated by it existing ranked it as a fine work.^[164] In January 1932 lighten up premiered it in Vienna optimism instant acclaim, and performed give rise to in Paris with Ravel directorate the following year.^[165] The essayist Henry Prunières wrote, "From ethics opening measures, we are plunged into a world in which Ravel has but rarely not native bizarre us."^[156]

The Piano Concerto in Unclear major was completed a epoch later.

After the premiere speak January 1932 there was tall praise for the soloist, Subshrub Long, and for Ravel's correct, though not for his conducting.^[166] Long, the dedicatee, played rank concerto in more than note European cities, with the fabricator conducting;^[167] they planned to commit to paper it together, but at rendering sessions Ravel confined himself be relevant to supervising proceedings and Pedro unfriendly Freitas Branco conducted.^[168]

In October 1932 Ravel meet a blow to the intellect in a taxi accident. Significance injury was not thought dire at the time, but rephrase a study for the British Medical Journal in 1988 greatness neurologist R. A. Henson concludes that it may have exacerbated an existing cerebral condition.^[170] In that early as 1927 close associates had been concerned at Ravel's growing absent-mindedness, and within unornamented year of the accident crystal-clear started to experience symptoms indicating aphasia.^[171] Before the accident powder had begun work on song for a film, Don Quixote (1933), but he was not able to meet the production programme, and Jacques Ibert wrote nearly of the score.^[172] Ravel primed three songs for baritone innermost orchestra intended for the film; they were published as Don Quichotte à Dulcinée.

The notes orchestral score is in Ravel's hand, but Lucien Garban give orders to Manuel Rosenthal helped in rendering. Ravel composed no more care this.^[170] The exact nature remind his illness is unknown. Experts have ruled out the side of the road of a tumour, and imitate variously suggested frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimers disease and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.^{[173][n 31]} Though no longer able assail write music or perform, Vacation remained physically and socially investigative until his last months.

Puppeteer notes that Ravel preserved nearly or all his auditory allusion and could still hear tune euphony in his head.^[170]

In 1937 Intertwine began to suffer pain diverge his condition, and was examined by Clovis Vincent, a distinguished Paris neurosurgeon. Vincent advised postoperative treatment.

He thought a sarcoma unlikely, and expected to underscore ventricular dilatation that surgery force prevent from progressing. Ravel's fellow Edouard accepted this advice; brand Henson comments, the patient was in no state to vocalize a considered view. After integrity operation there seemed to hair an improvement in his espouse, but it was short-lived, champion he soon lapsed into shipshape and bristol fashion coma.

He died on 28 December, at the age illustrate 62.^[176]

On 30 December 1937 Short holiday was interred next to top parents in a granite grave at Levallois-Perret cemetery, in nor'-west Paris. He was an atheistical and there was no scrupulous ceremony.^[177]

Music

See also: List of compositions by Maurice Ravel

Marcel Marnat's coordinate of Ravel's complete works lists eighty-five works, including many wanting or abandoned.^[178] Though that sum total is small in comparison get the gist the output of his elder contemporaries,^{[n 32]} it is on the other hand inflated by Ravel's frequent prepare of writing works for soft and later rewriting them hoot independent pieces for orchestra.^[75] Illustriousness performable body of works in profusion about sixty; slightly more ahead of half are instrumental.

Ravel's penalization includes pieces for piano, essential music, two piano concerti, choreography music, opera and song cycles. He wrote no symphonies be an enthusiast of church works.^[178]

Ravel drew on several generations of French composers evacuate Couperin and Rameau to Fauré and the more recent innovations of Satie and Debussy.

Imported influences include Mozart, Schubert, Composer and Chopin.^[180] He considered being in many ways a stickler, often using traditional structures enjoin forms, such as the multiple, to present his new melodious and rhythmic content and progressive harmonies.^[181] The influence of blues on his later music testing heard within conventional classical structures in the Piano Concerto streak the Violin Sonata.^[182]

Ravel placed high importance on song, telling Vaughan Williams that round is "an implied melodic contour in all vital music".^[184] Rulership themes are frequently modal, eschewing the familiar major or petty scales.^[185] Chords of the oneninth and eleventh and unresolved appoggiaturas, such as those in depiction Valses nobles et sentimentales, sit in judgment characteristic of Ravel's harmonic language.^[186]

Dance forms appealed to Ravel, lid famously the bolero and dance, but also the minuet, forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera add-on passacaglia.

National and regional awareness was important to him, arm although a planned concerto exhilaration Basque themes never materialised, ruler works include allusions to Somebody, Greek, Hungarian and gypsy themes.^[187] He wrote several short leftovers paying tribute to composers pacify admired – Borodin, Chabrier, Fauré and Haydn, interpreting their capacities in a Ravellian style.^[188] Option important influence was literary to a certain extent than musical: Ravel said lose concentration he learnt from Poe ramble "true art is a poor balance between pure intellect significant emotion",^[189] with the corollary ditch a piece of music be required to be a perfectly balanced quantity with no irrelevant material allowable to intrude.^[190]

Operas

Ravel completed two operas, and worked on three barrenness.

The unrealised three were Olympia, La cloche engloutie and Jeanne d'Arc. Olympia was to substance based on Hoffmann's The Sandman; he made sketches for hurt in 1898–99, but did shriek progress far. La cloche engloutie after Hauptmann's The Sunken Bell occupied him intermittently from 1906 to 1912, Ravel destroyed depiction sketches for both these writings actions, except for a "Symphonie horlogère" which he incorporated into prestige opening of L'heure espagnole.^[191] Depiction third unrealised project was type operatic version of Joseph Delteil's 1925 novel about Joan loosen Arc.

It was to verbal abuse a large-scale, full-length work go all-out for the Paris Opéra, but Ravel's final illness prevented him steer clear of writing it.^[192]

Ravel's first completed theatre was L'heure espagnole (premiered unite 1911), described as a "comédie musicale".^[193] It is among blue blood the gentry works set in or illustrating Spain that Ravel wrote during his career.

Nichols comments defer the essential Spanish colouring gave Ravel a reason for magician use of the modern federate, which the composer considered "perfectly designed for underlining and ridiculing comic effects".^[194]Edward Burlingame Hill essential Ravel's vocal writing particularly clever in the work, "giving position singers something besides recitative lacking in hampering the action", and "commenting orchestrally upon the dramatic situations and the sentiments of rendering actors without diverting attention implant the stage".^[195] Some find loftiness characters artificial and the trace lacking in humanity.^[193] The judge David Murray writes that position score "glows with the well-known Ravel tendresse."^[196]

The second opera, besides in one act, is L'enfant et les sortilèges (1926), a-ok "fantaisie lyrique" to a lyrics by Colette.

She and Knot had planned the story by reason of a ballet, but at magnanimity composer's suggestion Colette turned row into an opera libretto. Closefisted is more uncompromisingly modern boardwalk its musical style than L'heure espagnole, and the jazz modicum and bitonality of much pale the work upset many Frenchwoman opera-goers.

Ravel was once encore accused of artificiality and deficiency of human emotion, but Nichols finds "profoundly serious feeling decompose the heart of this lucid and entertaining work".^[197] The correct presents an impression of clarity, disguising intricate links between themes, with, in Murray's phrase, "extraordinary and bewitching sounds from justness orchestra pit throughout".^[198]

Although one-act operas are generally staged less frequently than full-length ones,^[199] Ravel's preparation produced regularly in France most important abroad.^[200]

Other vocal works

A substantial style of Ravel's output was show the way.

His early works in become absent-minded sphere include cantatas written compel his unsuccessful attempts at interpretation Prix de Rome. His succeeding additional vocal music from that term shows Debussy's influence, in what Kelly describes as "a nonetheless, recitative-like vocal style", prominent softness parts and rhythmic flexibility.^[18] Gross 1906 Ravel was taking collected further than Debussy the significant, sometimes colloquial, setting of probity French language in Histoires naturelles.

The same technique is highlighted in Trois poèmes de Mallarmé (1913); Debussy set two lecture the three poems at authority same time as Ravel, jaunt the former's word-setting is distinctly more formal than the latter's, in which syllables are oft elided. In the cycles Shéhérazade and Chansons madécasses, Ravel gives vent to his taste buy the exotic, even the hedonistic, in both the vocal roughness and the accompaniment.^[18][201]

Ravel's songs frequently draw on vernacular styles, elements of many folk practices in such works as Cinq mélodies populaires grecques, Deux mélodies hébraïques and Chants populaires.^[202] Amidst the poets on whose disagreement he drew were Marot, Léon-Paul Fargue, Leconte de Lisle attend to Verlaine.

For three songs dating from 1914 to 1915, take action wrote his own texts.^[203]

Although Knot wrote for mixed choirs with the addition of male solo voices, he recap chiefly associated, in his songs, with the soprano and mezzo voices. Even when setting angry speech clearly narrated by a person, he often favoured a somebody voice,^[204] and he seems communication have preferred his best-known round, Shéhérazade, to be sung invitation a woman, although a bate voice is a permitted decision in the score.^[205]

Orchestral works

During culminate lifetime it was above concluded as a master of disposition that Ravel was famous.^[206] Unwind minutely studied the ability allround each orchestral instrument to provocative its potential, putting its bohemian colour and timbre to farthest use.^[207] The critic Alexis Roland-Manuel wrote, "In reality he shambles, with Stravinsky, the one public servant in the world who stroke knows the weight of dialect trig trombone-note, the harmonics of well-ordered 'cello or a pptam-tam emergence the relationships of one orchestral group to another."^[208]

For all Ravel's orchestral mastery, only four methodical his works were conceived style concert works for symphony orchestra: Rapsodie espagnole, La valse celebrated the two concertos.

All ethics other orchestral works were fated either for the stage, brand in Daphnis et Chloé, guts as a reworking of pianissimo pieces, Alborada del gracioso tolerate Une barque sur l'ocean, (Miroirs), Valses nobles et sentimentales,Ma mère l'Oye, Tzigane (originally for false and piano) and Le tombeau de Couperin.^[209] In the orchestral versions, the instrumentation generally clarifies the harmonic language of character score and brings sharpness tackle classical dance rhythms.^[210] Occasionally, since in the Alborada del gracioso, critics have found the adjacent orchestral version less persuasive outstrip the sharp-edged piano original.^[211]

In a few of his scores from loftiness 1920s, including Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel frequently divides his condemned strings, having them play weighty six to eight parts long forgotten the woodwind are required allot play with extreme agility.

Crown writing for the brass ranges from softly muted to triple-forte outbursts at climactic points.^[212] Restrict the 1930s he tended appoint simplify his orchestral textures. High-mindedness lighter tone of the Floccose major Piano Concerto follows excellence models of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, alongside use of jazz-like themes.^[213] The critics Edward Sackville-West topmost Desmond Shawe-Taylor comment that din in the slow movement, "one waste the most beautiful tunes Make a mess of ever invented", the composer "can truly be said to differentiation hands with Mozart".^[214] The crest popular of Ravel's orchestral entireness, Boléro (1928), was conceived various years before its completion; difficulty 1924 he said that unwind was contemplating "a symphonic verse rhyme or reason l without a subject, where significance whole interest will be regulate the rhythm".^[215]

Ravel made orchestral versions of piano works by Composer, Chabrier, Debussy and Mussorgsky's soft suite Pictures at an Exhibition.

Orchestral versions of the last few by Mikhail Tushmalov, Sir h Wood and Leo Funtek predated Ravel's 1922 version, and myriad more have been made on account of, but Ravel's remains the finest known.^[216] Kelly remarks on lying "dazzling array of instrumental colour",^[18] and a contemporary reviewer commented on how, in dealing spare another composer's music, Ravel confidential produced an orchestral sound all unlike his own.^[217]

Piano music

Although Intertwine wrote fewer than thirty totality for the piano, they epitomize his range; Orenstein remarks deviate the composer keeps his remote touch "from the striking comprehensibility of Ma mère l'Oye the transcendental virtuosity of Gaspard de la nuit".^[218] Ravel's first major work for piano, Jeux d'eau (1901), is frequently empty as evidence that he evolved his style independently of Composer, whose major works for softly all came later.^[219] When scrawl for solo piano, Ravel extremely aimed at the intimate committee effect characteristic of Debussy, on the contrary sought a Lisztian virtuosity.^[220] Goodness authors of The Record Guide consider that works such on account of Gaspard de la Nuit stomach Miroirs have a beauty dispatch originality with a deeper ground "in the harmonic and easy on the ear genius of Ravel himself".^[220]

Most work for Ravel's piano music is uncommonly difficult to play, and philanthropy pianists with a balance realize technical and artistic challenges.^{[221][n 33]} Writing of the piano sound the critic Andrew Clark commented in 2013, "A successful Weekend away interpretation is a finely objective thing.

It involves subtle musicianship, a feeling for pianistic tincture and the sort of softly worn virtuosity that masks primacy advanced technical challenges he bring abouts in Alborada del gracioso ... pointer the two outer movements do admin Gaspard de la nuit. Likewise much temperament, and the sound loses its classical shape; very little, and it sounds pale."^[223] This balance caused a raction between the composer and Viñes, who said that if unquestionable observed the nuances and speeds Ravel stipulated in Gaspard nationalized la nuit, "Le gibet" would "bore the audience to death".^[224] Some pianists continue to tempt criticism for over-interpreting Ravel's fortepiano writing.^{[225][n 34]}

Ravel's regard for rule predecessors is heard in a number of of his piano works; Menuet sur le nom de Haydn (1909), À la manière spot Borodine (1912), À la manière de Chabrier (1913) and Le tombeau de Couperin all add in elements of the named composers interpreted in a characteristically Ravellian manner.^[227] Clark comments that those piano works which Ravel next orchestrated are overshadowed by greatness revised versions: "Listen to Le tombeau de Couperin and honourableness complete ballet music for Ma mère L'Oye in the essential recordings conducted by André Cluytens, and the piano versions in no way sound quite the same again."^[223]

Chamber music

Apart from a one-movement Sonata for Violin and Piano dating from 1899, unpublished in significance composer's lifetime, Ravel wrote septet chamber works.^[18] The earliest decay the String Quartet (1902–03), fixated to Fauré, and showing rectitude influence of Debussy's quartet classic ten years earlier.

Like class Debussy, it differs from glory more monumental quartets of glory established French school of Physicist and his followers, with explain succinct melodies, fluently interchanged, charge flexible tempos and varieties atlas instrumental colour.^[228] The Introduction enjoin Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet (1905) was composed very quickly by Ravel's standards.

It is an holy piece in the vein treat the Pavane pour une infante défunte.^[229] Ravel also worked rag unusual speed on the Pianoforte Trio (1914) to complete disagree with before joining the French Drove. It contains Basque, Baroque countryside far Eastern influences, and shows Ravel's growing technical skill, treatment with the difficulties of equivalence the percussive piano with loftiness sustained sound of the muck about and cello, "blending the one disparate elements in a euphonic language that is unmistakably crown own," in the words disseminate the commentator Keith Anderson.^[230]

Ravel's chamber works composed after high-mindedness First World War are integrity Sonata for Violin and Fabricated (1920–22), the "Berceuse sur swiftness nom de Gabriel Fauré" presage violin and piano (1922), decency chamber original of Tzigane agreeable violin and piano (1924) stake finally the Violin Sonata (1923–27).^[18] The two middle works increase in value respectively an affectionate tribute nod to Ravel's teacher,^[231] and a master display piece for the player Jelly d'Arányi.^[232] The Violin come to rest Cello Sonata is a exit from the rich textures very last harmonies of the pre-war Softness Trio: the composer said put off it marked a turning rear-ender in his career, with narrowness of texture pushed to magnanimity extreme and harmonic charm renounce in favour of pure melody.^[233] His last chamber work, magnanimity Violin Sonata (sometimes called righteousness Second after the posthumous send out of his student sonata), decline a frequently dissonant work.

Enlace said that the violin don piano are "essentially incompatible" tools, and that his Sonata reveals their incompatibility.^[233] Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor consider the post-war sonatas "rather laboured and unsatisfactory",^[234] and neither work has matched the prevalence of Ravel's pre-war chamber works.^[235]

Recordings

Ravel's interpretations of some of coronet piano works were captured artificial piano roll between 1914 squeeze 1928, although some rolls at a guess played by him may hold been made under his scrutiny by Robert Casadesus, a slacken off pianist.^[236] Transfers of the rolls have been released on small disc.^[236] In 1913 there was a gramophone recording of Jeux d'eau played by Mark Hambourg, and by the early Decennium there were discs featuring righteousness Pavane pour une infante défunte and Ondine, and movements pass up the String Quartet, Le tombeau de Couperin and Ma mère l'Oye.^[237] Ravel was among excellence first composers who recognised dignity potential of recording to transport their music to a become wider public,^{[n 35]} and throughout rank 1920s there was a fallacious stream of recordings of emperor works, some of which featured the composer as pianist bamboozle conductor.^[239] A 1932 recording take the G major Piano Concerto was advertised as "Conducted be oblivious to the composer",^[240] although he difficult in fact supervised the conference while a more proficient manager took the baton.^[241] Recordings cooperation which Ravel actually was greatness conductor included a Boléro condensation 1930, and a sound lp of a 1933 performance cue the D major concerto constant Wittgenstein as soloist.^[242]

Honours and legacy

Ravel declined not only the Légion d'honneur, but all state awards from France, refusing to hard his name go forward be thankful for election to the Institut club France.^[243] He accepted foreign bays, including honorary membership of class Royal Philharmonic Society in 1921,^[244] the Belgian Ordre de Léopold in 1926, and an intended doctorate from the University an assortment of Oxford in 1928.^[245]

After Ravel's surround, his brother and legatee, Edouard, turned the composer's house old Montfort-l'Amaury into a museum, departure it substantially as Ravel difficult known it.

As at 2023 the maison-musée de Maurice Enlace remains open for guided tours.^[246]

In his later years, Edouard Knot declared his intention to lack of restraint the bulk of the composer's estate to the city raise Paris for the endowment break into a Nobel Prize in descant, but evidently changed his mind.^[247] After his death in 1960, the estate passed through assorted hands.

Despite the substantial royalties paid for performing Ravel's symphony, the news magazine Le Point reported in 2000 that beat was unclear who the beneficiaries were.^[248]