Maurice Ravel

1875–1937, FRENCH

Ravel’s life was devoted to the pursuit of musical perfection. A meticulous musical craftsman rather than an innovator, he produced comparatively few compositions but nevertheless developed a distinctive personal style.

MAURICE RAVEL
Shown here in later life at his piano, Ravel was first introduced to the instrument when he received lessons as a young boy. He went on to study piano at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire.

Maurice Ravel was a French citizen but his father, an engineer and inventor, was Swiss, and his mother was Spanish-Basque. He was born in 1875 in Ciboure, near Biarritz, in the Basque region of France, but the family moved to Paris while Maurice was still a baby.

He and his younger brother, Edouard, were initially educated at home by their father. He gave them a solid grounding in technology and science, but also conveyed his love of the arts and music. Edouard shared his father’s interest in engineering, while Maurice was drawn to his mother’s love of Basque and Spanish folk culture, which was later reflected in many of his compositions.

RAVEL AND VINES, 1905
Lifelong friends, Ravel (left) and Viñes were both born in 1875 and first met as students. The musicians are pictured together here in their thirties.

POSTER FOR PARIS EXPOSITION
At the Exposition Universelle in 1889, Ravel was inspired by new Russian music and the exotic sounds of the Javanese gamelan.

Emergent talent

Music played a large part in the Ravel household—both classical and the folk songs that Maurice’s mother sang. Maurice showed musical talent from an early age, began piano lessons at age seven, then went on to more serious studies in music theory, including his first attempts at composing, when he was 12. In the course of his studies, he met the young Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, who was to become a close friend, as well as a champion of Ravel’s music.

The year 1889 was eventful for Ravel. He started piano lessons with Émile Decombes, a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, who encouraged the young musician to give his first public performance. Later that year, Ravel was admitted to the Conservatoire to study piano. But it was as a composer rather than a pianist that his real talent lay, and while he was at the Conservatoire he began writing music in earnest. One of the events that inspired this change of emphasis was the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where he was exposed to exciting new and unfamiliar music.

Through the 1890s, Ravel focused on composition, but at the expense of his studies—his lack of progress in piano and theory obliged him to leave the Conservatoire in 1895. However, he enrolled in a composition course there two years later. His teacher, Gabriel Fauré, recognized his talent. Under his guidance, Ravel gained confidence to write his first mature works. He was also inspired by Erik Satie, whom he had met, and by his unconventional approach to composition. Ravel resolved to compose in the way he felt most comfortable, impervious to criticism.

SET DESIGN, DAPHNIS ET CHLOE
This set design was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes’ production of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, which premiered in Paris in 1912. The set was painted by Russian artist Léon Bakst, who became famous for his magnificent costumes and bold, richly colored set designs for Diaghilev. Diaghilev also commissioned the music from Ravel for this ballet.

Progressive influences

But Ravel’s progressive music, and politics, were still not acceptable at the Conservatoire and, despite Fauré’s support, he was again thrown out. Undeterred, he continued to compose, and became associated with a group of young musicians known as Les Apaches (the Hooligans), who were influenced by the composer Claude Debussy. Ravel had befriended Debussy, who was known as an “Impressionist” composer for the clear textures and subtle colors of his music. Similarly, Ravel’s sensual orchestration led to his own nomination as an Impressionist. However, Debussy detested the label, and Ravel also rejected it.

Ravel had still to make his name with the concert-going public. He entered the competition for the prestigious Prix de Rome each year, without success, from 1900 until 1905, when it became obvious that the musical establishment were preventing him from winning, even though he was probably the most gifted of the entrants. In the ensuing scandal, it was revealed that Théodore Dubois, director of the Conservatoire, was favoring students of one of his colleagues. Dubois was forced to resign. Although Ravel had missed out on the prize, the immense publicity won him the attention he deserved.

ALCYONE
This score is from Ravel’s Alcyone (1902). The cantata was the entry for one of his five unsuccessful attempts to win the Prix de Rome.

New avenues

This new-found celebrity inspired Ravel to revisit his earlier piano pieces and score them for orchestra to entice a wider concert-going audience. These arrangements showed that he had a flair for orchestration, revealed to brilliant effect in his first opera, L’Heure espagnole, and later by the ballet Daphnis et Chloé. The period between 1905 and the outbreak of World War I was, by Ravel’s slow and meticulous standards, a productive one, and established him as a major composer in France and abroad. But by 1913 his rate of production slowed even more: he wrote almost nothing during the war and its aftermath. When the war started, his application to join the French Air Force was turned down because of his age (he was approaching 40 years old) and health. In 1915, however, he was accepted by the army as a driver, supplying munitions to the front.

The conditions had a terrible effect on his already fragile health—he suffered dysentery and frostbite, and was deeply affected by the horrors of war. His woes increased when his mother died in 1917. But he completed the Neo-Baroque piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin (The Tomb of Couperin) during this time, its separate movements each honoring a friend lost in war. The piece evoked the music of the Baroque composer François Couperin (1668–1733).

Ravel emerged from war exhausted and depressed, and only slowly resumed work. In contrast to his early career, Ravel was now revered by the musical establishment as the heir to Debussy, and as the foremost French composer. But this was a very different era, dominated by new ideas from younger composers such as the group known as Les Six, who saw Ravel's music as outdated. As always, though, he was oblivious to criticism and, after completing the richly Romantic La Valse (The Waltz) in 1920, he began a second phase of composing, developing a slightly more modern style influenced by the atonality of composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and, especially, the harmonies and rhythms of jazz (see box).

RAVEL’S PIANO
Ravel’s piano is on display in the small house in which he lived (now the Musée Maurice Ravel), in Montfort-l’Amaury, for the last 20 years of his life.

Final years

The change in musical style was accompanied by a change in lifestyle. Ravel’s wartime experiences had aged him, and he found living in Paris overbearing, so he moved to Montfort-l’Amaury, west of Paris, where he lived alone for the rest of his life. Although Ravel is thought to have had one or two long-term relationships, he never married and by some accounts visited brothels from time to time. At Montfort-l’Amaury he produced, some of his finest and best-known music, concluding with Boléro and the two piano concertos.

Ravel’s final years were marred by illness. In 1932, he suffered a head injury in a car accident, which triggered a brain condition. He began to experience symptoms of aphasia, the inability to process language. Soon, he was no longer able to play the piano, or to compose. In 1937, the condition worsened and became increasingly painful—he was then advised by a Parisian neurosurgeon to have an operation. This was initially thought to be successful, but very soon after Ravel fell unconscious and died, aged 62.

IN PROFILE

Paul Wittgenstein

Ravel was one of several composers who was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein (the older brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein), a concert pianist who had lost his right arm in World War I. Ravel responded with the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major, composed in 1929–1930, at the same time as he was working on his Piano Concerto in G.

Wittgenstein was initially unhappy with the jazz-inspired piece, and Ravel was infuriated by his early interpretation of it, but in time the pianist grew to understand and appreciate Ravel’s intentions and premiered the work in 1932.

PAUL WITTGENSTEIN