(Anonymous contribution.)

French, of paternal Swiss and maternal Basque descent, Ravel combined skill in orchestration with meticulous technical command of harmonic resources, writing in an attractive musical idiom that was entirely his own, in spite of contemporary comparisons with Debussy, a composer his senior by some twenty years.

Ravel wrote two operas, the first, described as a comédie-musicale, L’heure espagnole (The Spanish Clock) and the second, with a libretto by Colette, the imaginative L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Enchantments), in which the naughty child is punished when furniture and animals assume personalities of their own.

Ravel wrote his ballet Daphnis et Chloé in response to a commission from the Russian impresario Dyagilev. The work, described as a symphonie choréographique is based on the Hellenistic pastoral novel of Longus. Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose), originally for piano duet, was orchestrated and used for a ballet, as were the Valses nobles et sentimentales and the choreographic poem La valse. Ravel’s last ballet score was the famous Boléro, a work he himself described as an orchestrated crescendo.

Songs by Ravel include the remarkable Shéhérazade, settings of a text by Tristan Klingsor for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, and the Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (Don Quixote to Dulcinea) songs, originally written for a film of Don Quixote in which the famous Russian bass Chaliapin was to star. Songs with piano include settings of the Jules Renard Histoires naturelles, with its instinctive sympathy with the birds and the cricket portrayed.

Ravel’s chamber music includes the evocative nostalgia of the Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet, a violin sonata with a jazz-style blues movement, a piano trio and a string quartet. Tzigane, written for the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi, is a remarkable excursion into extravagant gypsy style.

Ravel was himself a good pianist. His music for the piano includes compositions in his own nostalgic archaic style, such as the Pavane and the Menuet antique, as well as the more complex textures of pieces such as Jeux d’eau (Fountains), Miroirs and Gaspard de la nuit, with its sinister connotations. The Sonatina is in Ravel’s neo-classical style and Le tombeau de Couperin is in the form of a Baroque dance suite.

[in Dutch]
Maurice Ravel studeerde compositie in Parijs o.a. bij G. Fauré, nam vijf keer deel aan de competitie voor Prix de Rome (1900-1905), zonder deze één keer te winnen, zelfs toen hij al bekend componist was.
Ravel ontwikkelde zich als een classicistisch componist, die de traditionele vormen met souverein meesterschap wist te hanteren als kader voor zijn vernieuwingen. Hij had een grote aandacht voor het detail, ging uitermate minutieus te werk; hij onderzocht aan de piano iedere samenklank op zijn kwaliteiten. Kenmerkend zijn zijn vastomlijnde melodiepatronen en zijn voorliefde voor archaïsche modaliteiten. Opmerkelijk is ook het veelvuldig voorkomen van dansvormen in zijn werk.
Zoals in de Boléro toont Ravel zijn muzikale passie voor Spanje in de liederen voor een Don Quijote film. Uiteindelijk werden voor het filmproject de Don Quichotte-liederen van Jacques Ibert genomen. (contribution by Robbert Muuse <robbertmuuse@hotmail.com>)