Born:
March 7, 1875; Ciboure, France
Died:
December 28, 1937; Paris, France
Nationality:
French
Occupation: Composer, pianist, conductor
Maurice Ravel was a French
composer, pianist and conductor, born on March 7, 1875 and died on December 28,
1937. Although both composers rejected the term, Ravel is often associated with
impressionist music along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy. In the
1920s and 1930s, Ravel was internationally recognized as France's greatest
living composer.
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| Ravel (1925) |
Born into a music-loving family, Ravel entered the Paris Conservatoire, France's premier music college, but he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment. After leaving the conservatoire, he found his own way as a composer, developing a style of outstanding clarity, and incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism, and in his later works, jazz.
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Le Belvédère in Montfort L'Amaury, where Ravel lived from 1921 until his death |
As in his most famous work, Boléro (1928), Ravel liked to experiment with musical form that repetition replaces the development of music. He also made orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, the most famous of which was his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
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| Maurice Ravel's Museum House, Montfort L' Amaury |
Ravel, who composed music slowly and painstakingly, left fewer works than many of his contemporaries. Among his works, the works included in the repertoire are works for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas and eight song cycles. Many of his works exist in two versions, one for the piano and the other for the orchestra.
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Bust of Maurice Ravel, Montfort L'Amaury |
Ravel was one of the first composers to recognize the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider audience, and despite limited technique at the time, he took part in recordings of several of his works from the 1920s.
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