Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 - December 28, 1937) was a French composer, best known for his orchestral work, Bolero.
He is also well-known for his famous 1922 arrangement of
Pictures at an Exhibition.

He was born in Ciboure, France (near Biarritz, part of the French Basque region, bordering on Spain). His mother was Basque while his father was a Swiss inventor and industrialist. His parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris. During his schooling in Paris Ravel joined with a number of innovative young composers who referred to themselves as the "Apaches" because of their wild abandon. The group was well known for its drunken revelry.

He studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris in Paris, under Gabriel Fauré. He was also heavily influenced by Debussy's impressionist style. Ravel was also highly influenced from music around the world incluing 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 Wagner, and instead preferred to look to classical mythology for inspiration.

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

During the First World War Ravel was not allowed to enlist because of his age and weak health and instead he became an ambulance driver.

In 1932 Ravel was involved in an automobile accident that severely undermined his health. His output dropped dramatically. In 1937 he had an operation that he hoped would restore much of his health, but the operation was a failure and he died soon afterwards.

When American composer George Gershwin met Ravel, he mentioned that he would have liked to study with the French composer if that were possible. The Frenchman retorted, "Why should you be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?"

Stravinsky once referred to Ravel as the "Swiss Watchmaker", a reference to the intricacy and precision of Ravel's works.

Compositions by Maurice Ravel include:
Pavane pour une infante defunte ("Pavane for a Dead Princess")
Jeux d'eau
Shéhérazade (ouverture de feerie) ("Scheherazade")
String Quartet in F major
Daphnis et Chloé ("Daphne and Chloé")
Ma Mère L'Oye ("Mother Goose")
Gaspard de la nuit ("Phantom of the Night")
Rapsodie Espagnole ("Spanish Rhapsody")
Valses nobles et sentimentales ("Noble and Sentimental Waltzes")
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Piano Trio in a minor
Piano Concerto in G major
Piano Concerto for Left Hand Only in D major
La Valse

Bolero

The Bolero by Maurice Ravel is his most famous pieces of music.

The work had its genesis in a commission from the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who asked Ravel to create a ballet score with a Spanish character. The original plan had been for him to orchestrate excerpts from Isaac Albéniz' set of piano pieces, Iberia, but he was unable to obtain the rights to do so, as Albéniz had given the rights of orchestration to his pupil Ferdinand Enrique Arbos. Ravel instead wrote a brand new piece.

The piece has a very simple structure - it consists almost entirely of a single melody, repeated over and over again, orchestrated differently each time, but otherwise unchanging. It begins quietly, with the melody played in C major by a flute over an ostinato rhythm tapped out by a snare drum which continues throughout the piece (for the last few minutes of the work, it is played by two drums in unison):
The melody is passed between different instruments, clarinet, bassoon, E-flat clarinet, oboe d'amore, trumpet, saxophone, horn and so on. The accompaniment becomes gradually thicker and louder until the whole orchestra is playing at the very end. Just before the end (rehearsal number 18 in the score), there is a sudden change of key to E major, though C major is reestablished after just eight bars. Six bars from the end, the bass drum, cymbals and tam-tam make their first entry, and the trombones play raucous glissandi while the whole orchestra beats out the rhythm that has been played on the snare drum from the very first bar. The work ends on a C major chord.

The work was a great success when it was premiered at the Paris Opéra on November 22, 1928. It has remained popular ever since, though is usually played as a purely orchestral work, only rarely being staged. Ravel purported to be somewhat embarrassed that a piece which was, in his words, "without music", should become so well known.

The piece was first published by the Parisian firm Durand in 1929. Arrangements of the piece were made for piano solo and piano duet (two people playing at one piano), and Ravel himself made a version for two pianos, published in 1930.

Bolero was one of the last pieces that Ravel composed before illness forced him into retirement. The only works he wrote after this were the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, the Piano Concerto in G major and the song "Don Quichotte a Dulcinée". ]

The Bolero was famously used in the movie 10, and also accompanied ice skaters Torvill and Dean in their gold medal-winning performance at the 1984 Winter Olympics.

 

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Sally Chaney