Maurice Ravel

French composer

• Born: March 7, 1875
• Birthplace: Ciboure, France
• Died: December 28, 1937
• Place of death: Paris, France

Ravel was one of the most important composers during the first third of the twentieth century, working in many styles and in many different forms.

Early Life

Joseph Maurice Ravel (rah-vehl) was the first son of a French-Swiss engineer and a Basque woman he had met while working in Spain. After Ravel was born, he and his family moved to Paris. Although he would later write music based on Spanish and Basque themes and travel throughout Europe and the United States, Ravel would remain, at heart, a Parisian. Ravel’s parents recognized and appreciated their son’s early interest in music and spared no effort to send him to the best teachers they could find, starting at the age of six. From the ages of six through sixteen, Ravel moved quickly through the steps of a sound education in piano and music theory, gaining entrance into the Paris Conservatory in 1891. By 1895, when he left the conservatory, Ravel had already set his own style, which would upset the musical establishment.

Life’s Work

Ravel was an active composer for forty years (1893-1932) before ill health prevented him from composing during the last five years of his life. Most of those forty years were spent ignoring the critics and fellow composers who heaped abuse on him from all sides until after his death. Many of the more avant-garde members of the musical scene before World War I either tended to criticize Ravel for being a poor copy of Claude Debussy or criticized both men for not following the lead of the German composers of the Richard Wagner school, while the establishment critics saw all the above, including Ravel, as a threat to the music with which they had grown up. After the war, Ravel was often considered old-fashioned by the more radical composers, who were looking at jazz, Dada, or the works of Arnold Schoenberg for their inspiration.

Ravel was not interested in composing in the grand Romantic and chromatic style of the German school, and, while he admired Debussy and Schoenberg, he had no desire to imitate them. Instead, Ravel sought inspiration in the French baroque and in Spanish and Basque folk music. Yet, while his inspirations were often found in the past, his musical language was near the cutting edge of the avant-garde. Performers, especially pianists, often found his music to be exactly what they were looking for when they looked for the best contemporary music. His major works, including Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899), Sonatina (1905), Valses noble et sentimental (1911), Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917), and many others remain in the standard literature, while Pavane pour une infante défunte and Le Tombeau de Couperin, later orchestrated by Ravel, are also in the standard symphonic repertoire.

Ravel did not seek out publicity, but he nevertheless often found himself in the middle of controversy. In retrospect this is not surprising, since the French artistic scene at the turn of the century until the outbreak of World War I is now famous for its squabbling and even riots at premieres of new works of music and art. Perhaps the most famous controversy in which Ravel found himself was over the 1905 competition for the Prix de Rome (a contest in which a musician would be sent to study and compose in Rome for a year). The rejection of his work led to a major scandal fought out in the national press, which resulted in the resignation of the head of the Paris Conservatory.

Ravel also found himself in the middle of another scandal in early 1907. He had composed five humorous settings for five rather obscurely written poems by Jules Renard, which Ravel entitled Histoires naturelles , and in January, 1907, they were performed at the National Society of Music, most of whose members preferred the music of Wagner to that of the emerging school of French modernists. Most of the audience hissed at the work, and the critics lambasted it, one implying the music was a bad echo of Debussy. All those who did not like the music missed the humor, perhaps because they had made so much noise they had not really heard the music. Again the French newspapers took sides, and Ravel’s music was debated for weeks. Ravel ignored the entire affair and spent the time finishing his comic opera L’Heure espagnole, although it was not produced until 1911. Ravel continued this basic pattern up until World War I, composing works that would stir up opposition when they were first performed, even if they gained almost immediate acceptance by musicians, while he went on to produce another work. While Ravel was never a prolific composer, the years 1905-1914 were easily his most productive.

World War I changed Ravel’s personal world, just as it changed Europe. Ravel was not physically fit for the French army, but he managed to use his influence and was allowed to go to a training camp in 1915 with the possibility of later joining the new air force. Ravel never got to join the air force, but he did join the Motor Transport Corps as a driver in March, 1916. By May, his health had started to give way, and he was in various hospitals and rest camps for the rest of 1916. The year 1917 started with the death of his mother, something from which the very attached Ravel never completely recovered, and Ravel never really was active in the military afterward, as he suffered from insomnia and general poor health. It was during 1916, however, that Ravel, along with most other French musicians, opposed a plan to ban German music from France for the duration of the war. The letter Ravel wrote on the subject was one of the better-known objections to the plan.

Although Ravel wrote two of his most famous works, Le Tombeau de Couperin and Le Valse (1919), and the first versions of his Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920, 1922) and his second opera, L’Enfante et les sortilèges (1920, 1925), between 1917 and 1920, his musical output had slowed down, his health never completely recovered, and he would only get progressively worse as the years went by. Although Ravel would still produce a few more masterpieces (two piano concertos, a sonata for violin, and, in 1928, his famous short ballet piece Bolero ), he worked less and less, until, by 1933, Ravel was unable to complete any more projects, although he occasionally thought about trying to start one. At times, especially in the middle of 1933, he was unable even to sign his name.

Ravel spent the last few years of his life traveling and receiving friends at his house outside Paris, although he at times seemed unaware of his surroundings. He had undergone various medical treatments, but none had had any positive effect. As his health became worse, it was decided to operate on Ravel for a possible brain tumor on December 19, 1937. No evidence of a tumor was found, and Ravel’s decline increased. He died nine days after the operation.

Significance

Maurice Ravel’s works are some of the most important French compositions of the early twentieth century as well as the hardest to define. In many respects, Ravel’s music encompasses French music since the early baroque, and European music since Hector Berlioz. Elements and forms from all these styles, as well as Spanish and Basque folk elements, were quoted or used by Ravel throughout his career. So while in some respects Ravel was near the forefront of musical exploration, his use of these conservative elements disturbed most radicals, even as the way he used them bothered the musical establishment of his era. Ravel was determined to compose music that he believed would project the mood and themes he wished to convey, rather than being consistent within any set style.

For the most part, Ravel worked mainly in the areas of vocal, chamber, and piano music, and it is in these works that Ravel’s many varieties of style show themselves best. For the most part, as far as the general musical audience is concerned, he is best known for his larger symphonic works, such as Bolero, and for the orchestrations he made for his own piano works and those of others, especially Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1922).

Ravel’s direct influence was limited to a small group of students, best known as interpreters of Ravel and other twentieth century piano composers. His indirect influences, especially in the area of orchestration, are harder to define yet are nevertheless important. His compositions were meant to illustrate ideas and feelings, not to overwhelm the senses as much music of the previous generation had. At the same time, Ravel meant to stay within the basic confines of French music, although he felt free to recombine those elements as he saw fit. His genius was his eclecticism and taste.

Bibliography

Demuth, Norman. Ravel. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1947. Part of the Master Musicians series, this work has a short but complete biography of the composer but devotes more than three-quarters of the volume to competent academic analyses of Ravel’s music.

Ivry, Benjamin. Maurice Ravel: A Life. New York: Welcome Rain, 2000. A concise biography, relating Ravel’s work to his life, in which Ivry maintains the composer was secretly gay.

James, Burnett. Ravel, His Life and Times. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1983. A successful attempt to integrate Ravel’s life and music with the more general social and cultural context of the composer’s life.

Jankélévitch, Vladimir. Ravel. Translated by Margaret Crosland. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976. Although it has a short biography, this work is distinguished by its musical and dramatic critiques of Ravel’s music, especially the ballets. The analysis comes more from a romantic tradition than an academic one and includes a detailed chronology of Ravel’s work.

Mawer, Deborah, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ravel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Collection of essays about Ravel, including pieces examining his work within a cultural and aesthetic context, the early reception of his music, and his ballets, chamber music, operas, and compositions for piano and orchestra.

Myers, Rollo H. Ravel. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1960. Although the biographical and analytical sections are fairly standard, this work also includes Alexis Roland-Manuel’s 1937 memorial essay and Ravel’s 1916 letter from the western front opposing the ban of German music from performance in France.

Nichols, Roger, ed. Ravel Remembered. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Ravel’s life as told through letters, diaries, and other accounts by those who knew him. Nichols places these anecdotes into context when necessary but prefers to let the memories speak for themselves as much as possible.

Orenstein, Arbie. Ravel: Man and Musician. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. Although the biographical section is only a standard account, this work does include more than forty illustrations. More important, it contains excellent discussions of Ravel’s musical aesthetics and creative process.

Roland-Manuel, Alexis. Maurice Ravel. Translated by Cynthia Jolly. Reprint. New York: Dover, 1972. An interesting and honest appraisal of Ravel’s life and work, originally written in French in 1938 and translated in 1947. Roland-Manuel was both a pupil and friend of Ravel, and the book includes a detailed list of Ravel’s compositions.