Musicians - Maurice Ravel

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	Musicians - Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937) was a French composer and pianist, known especially for the subtlety, richness, and poignancy of his music and generally considered to be one of the major composers of the 20th century. His piano, chamber music, and orchestral works have become staples in the repertoire. Ravel's piano compositions, such as Miroirs and Gaspard de la Nuit are virtuosic, and his orchestrations, such as in Daphnis et Chloé and his orchestral arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, are notable for the effective use of tonal color and variety of sound and instrumentation. To the general public he is probably best known for his orchestral work, Boléro, which he considered a trivial work and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music". According to SACEM, Ravel currently earns more royalties than any other French musician, making him (for now at least) officially France's most popular composer.

Biography

Ravel was born in Ciboure, France near Biarritz, part of the French Basque region, bordering on Spain. His mother, Marie Delouart, was Basque while his father, Joseph Ravel, was a Swiss inventor and industrialist. A few of Joseph's inventions are quite important; among them are an early internal combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, "The Whirlwind of Death" (an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a hit in the early 1900s). After the family moved to Paris, Ravel's younger brother Edouard was born. At seven years old, young Maurice began piano lessons and composed pieces beginning about five or six years later. His parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. During his schooling in Paris, Ravel joined with a number of innovative young artists who referred to themselves as the "Apaches" ("hooligans") because of their wild abandon. The group was well known for its drunken revelry.

He studied music at the Conservatoire under Gabriel Fauré for a remarkable fourteen years. During his years at the conservatory, 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 conservatory. 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 was not religious and was probably an atheist. He disliked the overtly religious themes of other composers, such as Richard Wagner, 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 would go on to work with ballet choreographer Sergei Diaghilev who staged Ma Mere l'Oye and Daphnis et Chloe. The latter was commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the great Vaslav Nijinsky. Ravel would, however, continue his feud with the French musical establishment: In 1920, the French government awarded him with the Legion d'honneur, but Ravel refused. Soon, he retired to the French countryside where he continued to write music albeit less prolifically.

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. That same year, Oxford University awarded him with an honorary doctorate.

Ravel never married, but he did have several long-running relationships. He was also known to frequent the bordellos of Paris.

Though Maurice considered his small size and light weight an advantage to becoming a pilot, 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, Maurice Ravel 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.

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