Maurice Ravel

A composer with a modern and demanding repertoire, as much for his science of orchestration as for the structural rigor of his works, Maurice Ravel remains associated with his most basic and most performed piece in the world, his famous Boléro. The son of a Swiss engineer and a Basque mother, Joseph Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure on March 7, 1875. He was three years old when his parents moved to Paris, and began piano lessons four years later with Henri Ghys, then harmony with Charles René. After further lessons with Émile Descombes, he entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1889, where his successive teachers were Eugène Anthiôme and then Charles de Bériot (piano), Émile Pessard (harmony), André Gédalge (counterpoint and fugue) and Gabriel Fauré (composition). A gifted student in both theory and practice, he was already showing originality, and his classmates included Ricardo Viñes and Érik Satie, who inspired him to write the Sérénade grotesque, among other melodies, and the Menuet antique for piano. Before he had finished his studies, two of his works were performed at the Société nationale, the Sites auriculaires for two pianos (March 1898), including the Habanera which later became part of the Rhapsodie espagnole for orchestra, and Shéhérazade (May 1899), a piece for orchestra which he conducted, reworked for the 1903 melody cycle. In 1901, Ravel won the second Prix de Rome with the cantata Myrrha, followed by three other unsuccessful attempts until 1905, when he reached the age limit. These rejections caused a scandal, and led to the replacement of Théodore Dubois by Fauré at the head of the institution. Ravel had already written some of his best-known works, such as Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899), Jeux d'eau (1901) and the String Quartet (1903), premiered by the Heyman Quartet to critical acclaim. Regarded as a disciple of Debussy, which led to a new scandal at the premiere of Histoires naturelles in 1907, when Ravel was accused of copying him, it was demonstrated that he possessed a lange of his own with very different structures. Leader of the "Société des Apaches", an avant-garde group that included Viñes, Florent Schmitt, Manuel de Falla and Igor Stravinsky, Ravel developed his repertoire with the aforementioned Rhapsodie espagnole, the comedy L'Heure espagnole (premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1911) and the piano pieces Miroirs (1905, later orchestrated), Gaspard de la nuit (1908), Ma Mère l'Oye for piano à quatre mains (1910, orchestrated for the ballet in 1912), the Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911), as well as the ballet suites Daphnis et Chloé, premiered by Serge de Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on June 8, 1912 with dancers Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina. He also wrote several vocal works, including 3 Poèmes pour Stéphane Mallarmé (premiered in 1914), and chamber music with Introduction et allegro for harp, string quartet, flute and clarinet (1907) and Trio avec piano (1914). In reaction to the Société nationale, which he considered too conservative, the composer founded the S.M.I. (Société musicale indépendante) and programmed the Valses nobles et sentimentales, without specifying that he was the author, before a disconcerted audience. When the First World War broke out, Ravel volunteered and was sent to the front not far from Verdun as an ambulance driver. Ill in 1916, he was demobilized and demoralized by the violence of the fighting. He completed Le Tombeau de Couperin, six piano pieces dedicated to his fallen comrades. He takes refuge at the "Belvédère", a villa he has just bought in Montfort-l'Amaury, near Paris, where he devotes himself to composing, keeping away from the mundane and adopting a regimented lifestyle. On December 12, 1920, he presented La Valse in Paris, a choreographic poem he had been working on for several years, in the form of an orchestral whirlwind ending in dissonant chaos, which he later adapted for piano. Nominated for the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, he refused the distinction, out of decency towards the "poilus" sent off to war. In the Sonata for violin and cello (in memory of Debussy, 1922), the Berceuse sur le nom de Fauré for violin and piano (idem), Tzigane for violin and orchestra (1924) and the Sonata for violin and piano (completed in 1927), his style is stripped of all superfluity. The composer nevertheless retained a sense of enchantment with L'Enfant et les sortilèges, a lyrical fantasy based on a libretto by the writer Colette, premiered in Monte-Carlo on March 21, 1925, in which objects take on a voice, like the Asian-inspired teapot. During these years, Ravel traveled to conduct his works in Amsterdam and Venice, or to perform them at the piano in London (1926). He toured Sweden, Great Britain and the United States, in both roles, in 1928. On November 22 of the same year, Boléro was staged at the Paris Opéra, a choreographic spectacle featuring the dancer Ida Rubinstein, set to a metronomic crescendo of a quarter-hour and 340 bars that bewitched the audience. The orchestral piece became his greatest success, appearing continuously in concert programs. Among his last major works are the Concerto pour la main gauche, composed for the infirm pianist Paul Wittgenstein and premiered in Vienna on November 27, 1931, and the Concerto pour piano en sol, performed by Marguerite Long under the composer's direction in Paris on January 14, 1932. The melodies from Don Quichotte to Dulcinée, written for a film with Chaliapine but ultimately dropped from the project, were premiered on stage in 1934. In 1932, Ravel was in a cab when it crashed. The injuries, considered superficial, caused symptoms such as lack of muscular coordination and partial paralysis, which he suffered for four years. On his return from a trip to Spain and Morocco, the doctors decided to attempt brain surgery, which left him in a coma for nine days and proved fatal. Maurice Ravel died on December 28, 1937 at the age of 62. His house in Monfort-l'Amaury has become a museum, and his Bolero has been the subject of countless performances and arrangements, notably by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Frank Zappa, Charles Aznavour and guitarist Jeff Beck in his "Beck's Bolero", and of a film in 2024. Its entry into the public domain gave rise in France to a legal battle between Sacem and the asserted rightful owners, as the work earns one and a half million euros a year in royalties.