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Maurice Ravel Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs and Gaspard de la Nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, for example Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, use tonal color and variety of sound and instrumentation very effectively. To the general public, Ravel is 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. Biography He studied music at the Conservatoire under Gabriel Fauré for a remarkable fourteen 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), even though he was considered the favourite to win that year, 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. While many critics claim Ravel was influenced by composer Claude Debussy, Ravel himself claimed he was much more influenced by Mozart and Couperin, whose compositions are much more structured and classical in form. Ravel and Debussy were, however, clearly the defining composers of the impressionist movement. Ravel was also highly influenced by music from around the world including American Jazz, Asian music, and traditional folk songs from across Europe. Ravel had left the Roman Catholic Church and was a self-declared atheist, although he was also a spiritualist like many skeptics of his generation. He disliked the overtly religious themes of other composers, and instead preferred to look to classical mythology for inspiration. In 1907, after the premiere of Histoires Naturelles a controversy erupted. Pierre Lalo criticised the work as plagiarism of Debussy; however criticism was quickly silenced after the Rhapsodie espagnole was received with such high critical acclaim. Ravel later worked with ballet choreographer 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. Ravel continued his feud with the French musical establishment: In 1920, the French government awarded him the Légion d'honneur, but Ravel refused. Soon, he retired to the French countryside where he continued to write music, albeit less prolifically. Diaghelev commissioned Ravel to write La Valse (1920), originally named Wien (Vienna), and Ravel was hurt by the fact that Diaghelev never used the composition. When the two men met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghelev's hand; Diaghelev challenged Ravel to a duel (friends talked Diaghelev out of it). The men never met again. In 1928, Ravel for the first time began a piano 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. 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. Although he considered his small size 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 first hand reference mentions him driving an ambulance. His few students included Maurice Delage, Manuel Rosenthal and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Ravel made one of his few recordings when he conducted his Bolero with the Lameroux orchestra in 1930. 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's possible he merely supervised the recording. In 1932, Ravel sustained a blow to the head in an accident while a passenger in a taxi. The injury itself was considered minor but soon thereafter he began to complain of aphasia-like symptoms. Ravel had begun work on music for a proposed film version of Don Quixote featuring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and, when he could not complete the project, Jacques Ibert took over. Ravel could no longer compose music; he could not write down the musical ideas he heard in his mind. Finally, in late 1937, he consented to a primitive brain surgery. One hemisphere of his brain was re-inflated with serum. He awoke from the surgery, called for his brother Edouard, lapsed into a coma and died shortly afterwards. He is buried in Levallois-Perret (a north-west part of Paris, France). 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 leading tone, instead of major, and the Aeolian instead of harmonic 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 appoggiaturas (listen to the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales). His piano music, some of which is noted for its technical challenges (for example Gaspard de la nuit), 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 bolero. Ravel has almost always been considered one of the two great French musical Impressionists (the other being Debussy), but in reality he is much more than just an Impressionist. In his A la maniere de...Borodine (In the manner of...Borodine), Ravel plays with the ability to both mimic and remain original. In a more complex situation, A la maniere de...Emmanuel Chabrier /Paraphrase sur un air de Gounod ("Faust IIème acte"), Ravel takes on a theme from Gounod's Faust and arranges it in the style of Emmanuel Chabrier. Even in writing in the style of others, Ravel's own voice as a composer remained distinct. Ravel had very meticulously crafted manuscripts. Unfortunately, early printed editions of his works were prone to errors. Painstakingly, he worked with his publisher, Durand, in correcting them. In a letter, Ravel wrote that when proofing L'enfant et les sortilèges, after many other editors had proofread the opera, he could still find ten errors per page. 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. For reasons that are not clear, after Ravel purchased his first and only house in 1921, he composed all of his works on an upright piano. He did not have a grand piano in his house. Musical Influence 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 twenty-five 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." When American composer George Gershwin met Ravel, he mentioned that he would have liked to study with the French composer if that were possible. The Frenchman retorted, "Why should you be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?" (The tag end of this anecdote has Ravel asking Gershwin how much money he made. Upon hearing Gershwin's answer, Ravel allegedly answers, "Perhaps it is I who should study with you!") His two piano concertos in many ways reflect the style of Gershwin. Of the Concerto in G, Ravel said the concertos of Mozart and Saint-Saëns served as his model. He intended to write an earlier concerto, Zazpiak Bat, but it was never finished. The title reflects his Basque heritage: meaning 'The Seven Are One', it refers to the seven Basque regions, and was a motto often used in connection with the idea of a Basque nation. Surviving notes and fragments also confirm that this naturally was to be heavily influenced by Basque music. Instead, Ravel abandoned the piece, using its nationalistic themes and rhythms in some of his other 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. |
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