Maurice Ravel

Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist, and conductor. Though often grouped with Impressionism alongside his older contemporary Claude Debussy, both men refused that label. By the 1920s and 1930s, he was considered France’s greatest living composer on the international stage. Ravel grew up in a household that loved music. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, France’s top music school, but the school’s conservative faculty treated him unfairly, sparking a public scandal. After leaving, he forged his own path, crafting a clear, precise style that drew on modernism, baroque, neoclassicism, and—later in his career—jazz. He enjoyed playing with musical structure; his most famous piece, *Boléro* (1928), replaces traditional development with relentless repetition. A master of orchestration, he also arranged piano works by other composers, most notably Mussorgsky’s *Pictures at an Exhibition* (1922). Ravel worked slowly and carefully, producing fewer pieces than many of his peers. His lasting works include piano pieces, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet scores, two operas, and eight song cycles. He wrote no symphonies or church music. Many of his compositions exist in two forms: a piano version first, then an orchestral one. Some piano works, like *Gaspard de la nuit* (1908), are extremely difficult to play, while complex orchestral pieces such as *Daphnis et Chloé* (1912) demand precise balance in performance. Ravel was an early advocate of recording as a way to reach a wider audience. Starting in the 1920s, despite his limited skill as a pianist or conductor, he participated in recordings of his own works, and others were made under his supervision. **Life and career**

**Early years**

Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, about 18 kilometres from the Spanish border. His father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was an educated engineer, inventor, and manufacturer from Versoix, near the Franco-Swiss border. His mother, Marie Delouart, was Basque and grew up in Madrid. By 19th-century standards, Joseph had married below his station—Marie was illegitimate and barely literate—but the marriage was happy. Some of Joseph’s inventions succeeded, including an early internal combustion engine and a circus machine called the “Whirlwind of Death,” an automotive loop-the-loop that remained a major attraction until a fatal accident at Barnum and Bailey’s Circus in 1903. Both parents were Roman Catholic; Marie was also something of a free-thinker, a trait her elder son inherited. Ravel was baptised in the Ciboure parish church six days after his birth. The family moved to Paris three months later, where a younger brother, Édouard, was born. Édouard was close to their father and later became an engineer. Maurice was especially devoted to his mother; her Basque-Spanish background strongly influenced his life and music. Among his earliest memories were the folk songs she sang to him. The household was not wealthy, but comfortable, and the two boys had happy childhoods. Ravel’s father enjoyed taking his sons to factories to see new machines, but he also had a deep interest in music and culture. Ravel later recalled, “Throughout my childhood I was sensitive to music. My father, much better educated in this art than most amateurs are, knew how to develop my taste and to stimulate my enthusiasm at an early age.” There is no record of Ravel receiving formal schooling in his early years; biographer Roger Nichols suggests his father may have been his main teacher. At age seven, Ravel began piano lessons with Henri Ghys, a friend of Emmanuel Chabrier. Five years later, in 1887, he started studying harmony, counterpoint, and composition with Charles-René, a pupil of Léo Delibes. He was not a child prodigy, but he was highly musical. Charles-René noted that Ravel’s musical understanding came naturally, “and not, as in the case of so many others, the result of effort.” His earliest known compositions—variations on a chorale by Schumann, variations on a theme by Grieg, and a single movement of a piano sonata—survive only in fragments. In 1888, Ravel met the young pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became a lifelong friend, a key interpreter of his works, and an important link to Spanish music. The two shared a love of Wagner, Russian music, and the writings of Poe, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé. At the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, Ravel was deeply impressed by new Russian works conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This music had a lasting effect on both Ravel and Debussy, as did the exotic sound of the Javanese gamelan, also heard at the Exposition. In 1889, Émile Decombes became Ravel’s piano teacher. That same year, at age fourteen, Ravel gave his earliest public performance, playing in a concert at the Salle Érard alongside other Decombes pupils, including Reynaldo Hahn and Alfred Cortot. **Paris Conservatoire**

Encouraged by his parents, Ravel applied to the Conservatoire de Paris, France’s most important music college. In November 1889, playing music by Chopin, he passed the exam for admission to the preparatory piano class of Eugène Anthiome. He won first prize in the Conservatoire’s piano competition in 1891, but otherwise did not stand out as a student. Still, these years marked significant growth in his development as a composer.