Maurice Ravel was a French composer and pianist, best known for his instrumental work Bolero and his famous 1922 orchestral arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel himself described Bolero as "…a piece for orchestra without music." His compositions are notable for his effective use of tonal colour and variety of sound and instrumentation.
Ravel combined skill in orchestration with meticulous technical command of harmonic resources. Although Ravel and Debussy influenced each other - and defined the impressionist movement - Ravel wrote an attractive musical idiom that was entirely his own.
Ravel considered himself a classicist: he relied on traditional forms and structures to present his new and innovative harmonies. He was also highly influenced by music from around the world, including American jazz, Asian idioms and ethnic folk songs from across Europe.
Ravel was born in Ciboure, France (near Biarritz, part of the French Basque region - bordering on Spain). His mother was Basque, his father a Swiss inventor and industrialist. At seven, Maurice began piano lessons and was composing six years later. His parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, studying under the composer Gabriel Faure for 14 years. Though obviously talented at the piano - his earliest public piano recital was at 14 (1889) - Ravel preferred composing.
He undertook private study with Andre Gedalge, whom he later stated was responsible for "the most valuable elements of my technique." Ravel studied the ability of each instrument carefully to determine its possible musical effects, and was sensitive to their colour and timbre. His insight may account for his success as an orchestrator and transcriber of his own piano works and those of other composers, such as Mussorgsky, Debussy and Schumann.
Ravel's first significant work, Habanera - for two pianos - was transcribed into the well-known third movement of his Rapsodie espagnole. His 1900 composition, Jeux d'eau ( "Fountains" ) - clearly a pathfinding impressionistic work - was his first piano masterpiece. Following in 1902 was Pavanne pour use infant defunte. Next was Miroirs (1905) and Ravel's music for the opera "L'heure espagnole" - full of humor and rich colour employing a wide variety of instruments and their characteristic qualities, including trombone, sarrusaphone, tuba, celesta, xylophone and bells.
Ravel further extended his mastery of impressionistic piano music with Gaspard de la nuit (1909), considered one of the most difficult solo pieces in the standard repertoire.
Ravel, Faure and some pupils - unhappy with the conservative musical establishment for discouraging performance of new music - formed the Societe Musical Independante, which presented Ravel's Ma Mere l'Oye (Mother Goose) in 1910.
Ravel's music for the ballet Daphnis et Chloe (1912) is considered the climax of his creative output. Stravinsky called the piece "one of the most beautiful products of all French music," and author Burnett James claims it is "Ravel's most impressive single achievement, as it is his most opulent and confident orchestral score." The work is notable for its rhythmic diversity, lyricism and evocations of nature.
During the years of the First World War, Ravel managed some compositions, including one of his most popular works - Le Tombeau de Couperin (1919).
Ravel found two bittersweet victories in 1920. La Valse - superficially described as a tribute to the waltz - premiered. In fact, it was a less sentimental reflection of post-World War I Europe. The French government awarded Ravel the Legion d'honneur, but he refused it.
Around 1922, Ravel completed his famous orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which drew widespread popularity and brought Ravel great fame and substantial profit.
In 1928, Ravel made a four month concert tour through North America - to enthusiastic critical and public acclaim. He heard jazz - likely Duke Ellington - in Harlem with George Gershwin, and in New Orleans. When Gershwin asked to study with him, Ravel retorted, "Why should you be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?"
Ravel found American composers to be hidebound to old classical rules of the European epoch. He felt that the outbursts of jazz and blues - emblematic of American society at the time - were not heard in the educated American musical community.
After returning to France, Ravel composed his most famous and controversial orchestral work, Bolero (1928). Feuding with conductor Arturo Toscanini over interpretation of tempo increased Bolero's fame, leading to a Hollywood film - Bolero - in 1934. The gradual crescendo of the insistent repetitive figure - without development or underlying significance - is unique in Ravel's oeuvre and the classical canon. The piece was later employed in 10, starring Bo Derek and Dudley Moore (1979).
After unsuccessful brain surgery to alleviate the effects of a blow to the head in a taxi accident in 1932, Ravel passed in 1937.
In his subsequent tribute to Ravel, Paul Landormy described La Valse as:
"…the most unexpected of the compositions of Ravel, revealing to us heretofore unexpected depths of Romanticism, power, vigor, and rapture in this musician whose expression is usually limited to the manifestations of an essentially classical genius."