出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』「2015/03/25 23:39:49」(JST)
モーリス・ラヴェル Maurice Ravel |
|
---|---|
1925年のラヴェル
|
|
基本情報 | |
出生名 | Joseph Maurice Ravel |
出生 | 1875年3月7日 フランス共和国・シブール |
出身地 | フランス共和国 パリ |
死没 | 1937年12月28日(満62歳没) フランス共和国・パリ |
学歴 | パリ音楽院 |
ジャンル | クラシック音楽 |
職業 | 作曲家 |
活動期間 | 1892年 - 1932年 |
ポータル クラシック音楽 |
ジョゼフ=モーリス(モリス)・ラヴェル(Joseph-Maurice Ravel 発音例, 1875年3月7日 - 1937年12月28日)は『スペイン狂詩曲』やバレエ音楽『ダフニスとクロエ』、バレエ音楽『ボレロ』の作曲や『展覧会の絵』のオーケストレーションでよく知られたフランスの作曲家。バスク系フランス人。
1875年にフランス南西部、スペインにほど近いバスク地方のシブールで生まれる。生家は、オランダの建築家により17世紀に建てられたもので、アムステルダムの運河に面している建物のように完全にオランダ様式を呈して、サン=ジャン=ド=リュズの港に面して建っている。母マリーはバスク人であった。一方、父ジョゼフはスイス出身の発明家兼実業家であった。家族がパリへ移住した後、弟エドゥアールが生まれた。
音楽好きの父の影響で、7歳でピアノを始め、12歳で作曲の基礎を学んだ。両親はラヴェルが音楽の道へ進むことを激励し、パリ音楽院へ送り出した。音楽院に在籍した14年の間、ガブリエル・フォーレやエミール・ペサールらの下で学んだラヴェルは、多くの若く革新的な芸術家と行動を共にし、影響と薫陶を受ける[1]。
1898年3月5日の国民音楽協会第266回演奏会において作曲家として公式デビューを果たした[2]ラヴェルは、1900年から5回にわたって、有名なローマ大賞を勝ち取ろうと試みる。2回目の挑戦となった1901年にはカンタータ『ミルラ』で3位に入賞したものの、大賞は獲得できなかった(この時の大賞はアンドレ・カプレ、2位はガブリエル・デュポン)。1902年、1903年は本選において入賞を逃し(1902年の大賞はエメ・キュンク、1903年はラウル・ラパラ)、1904年はエントリーを見送った。翌1905年は、年齢制限によりラヴェルにとって最後の挑戦となったが、大賞どころか予選段階で落選してしまった。すでに『亡き王女のためのパヴァーヌ』、『水の戯れ』などの作品を発表していたラヴェルが予選落ちしたことは音楽批評家の間に大きな波紋を呼び、フォーレをはじめ、ロマン・ロランらも抗議を表明した。さらに、この時の本選通過者6名全てがパリ音楽院作曲家教授であり審査員シャルル・ルヌヴーの門下生であったことはコンクールの公正さの点からも問題視された。この「ラヴェル事件」により、パリ音楽院院長のテオドール・デュボワは辞職に追い込まれ、後任院長となったフォーレがパリ音楽院のカリキュラム改革に乗り出す結果となった[3]。
1907年、歌曲集『博物誌』の初演後、エドゥアール・ラロの息子ピエール・ラロはこの作品をドビュッシーの盗作として非難し、論争が起こった。しかし、『スペイン狂詩曲』が高い評価で受け入れられると、すぐに批判はおさまった。そしてラヴェルは、バレエ・リュス(ロシア・バレエ団)の主宰者セルゲイ・ディアギレフからの委嘱により『ダフニスとクロエ』を作曲した。『ダフニスとクロエ』作曲中の1909年にはラヴェルは国民音楽協会と決別し、シャルル・ケックランらと現代的な音楽を新しい音楽の創造を目指す団体、独立音楽協会を旗揚げした。
第一次世界大戦中、ラヴェルはパイロットとして志願したが、年齢とその虚弱体質からその希望は叶わず、1915年に3月にトラック輸送兵として兵籍登録された[4]。ラヴェルの任務は砲弾の下をかいくぐって資材を輸送するような危険なものであった[5]。
大戦中の1917年1月15日、最愛の母親が76歳でこの世を去る。生涯最大の悲しみに直面したラヴェルの創作意欲は極度に衰え、1914年にある程度作曲されていた組曲『クープランの墓』[6]を完成(1917年11月)させた以外は、3年間にわたって実質的な新曲を生み出せず、1920年の『ラ・ヴァルス』以降も創作ペースは年1曲程度と極端に落ちてしまった[7]。母の死から3年経とうとした1919年末にラヴェルがイダ・ゴデブスカに宛てた手紙には、「日ごとに絶望が深くなっていく」と、痛切な心情が綴られている[8]。
1920年1月、ラヴェルはレジオンドヌール勲章叙勲者にノミネートされたが、これを拒否したために物議を醸し、結果的に4月に公教育大臣と大統領によってラヴェルへの叙勲は撤回された。
1920年代のフランスでは、エリック・サティを盟主とする「フランス6人組」の登場や、複調、無調、アメリカのジャズなど、新しい音楽のイディオムの広まりによって、もはやラヴェルの音楽は時代の最先端ではなくなった。さかんに演奏旅行を行う一方、ラヴェルの創作活動は低調になり、そのピークである1923年にはヴァイオリンソナタのスケッチしか残せていない[9]。
1928年、ラヴェルは初めてアメリカに渡り、4ヶ月に及ぶ演奏旅行を行った。ニューヨークでは満員の聴衆のスタンディングオベーションを受ける一方、ラヴェルは黒人霊歌やジャズ、摩天楼の立ち並ぶ町並みに大きな感銘を受けた。この演奏旅行の成功により、ラヴェルの名声は世界に鳴り響いた。同年、オックスフォード大学の名誉博士号を授与される。
アメリカからの帰国後、ラヴェルが生涯に残せた楽曲は、『ボレロ』(1928年)、『左手のためのピアノ協奏曲』(1930年)、『ピアノ協奏曲 ト長調』(1931年)、『ドゥルシネア姫に心を寄せるドン・キホーテ』(1933年)の、わずか4曲である。
ラヴェルは1927年頃から軽度の記憶障害や言語症に悩まされていたが、1932年、パリでタクシーに乗っている時、交通事故に遭い、これを機に症状が徐々に進行していった。タクシー事故にあった同年に、最後の楽曲『ドルシネア姫に想いを寄せるドン・キホーテ』の作曲に取り掛かるが、楽譜や署名を頻繁にスペルミスをするようになり、完成が長引いている。字を書くときに文字が震え、筆記体は活字体になり、わずか50語程度の手紙を1通仕上げるのに辞書を使って1週間も費やした。動作が次第に緩慢になり、手足をうまく動かせなくなり、それまで得意だった水泳ができなくなった。言葉もスムーズに出なくなったことからたびたび癇癪を起した。また渡されたナイフの刃を握ろうとして周囲を慌てさせたが、自身の曲の練習に立ち会った際には演奏者のミスを明確に指摘している(どんな病気にかかっていたか、またその原因が交通事故によるものなのかどうかは諸説ある[10])。
1933年11月、パリで最後のコンサートを行い、代表作『ボレロ』などを指揮するが、この頃には手本がないと自分のサインも満足にできない状態にまで病状が悪化しており、コンサート終了後、ファンからサインを求められたラヴェルは、「サインができないので、後日弟にサインさせて送る」と告げたという。1934年には周囲の勧めでスイスのモンペルランで保養に入ったが、いっこうに健康が回復せず、病状は悪化の一途をたどった。1936年になると、周囲との接触を避けるようになり、小さな家の庭で一日中椅子に座ってボーっとしていることが多くなった。たまにコンサートなどで外出しても、無感動な反応に終始するか、突発的に癇癪を爆発させたりで、周囲を困惑させた。
病床にあって彼はいくつかの曲の着想を得、それを書き留めようとしたがついに一文字も書き進める事が出来なくなったと伝えられる。ある時、友人に泣きながら「私の頭の中にはたくさんの音楽が豊かに流れている。それをもっとみんなに聴かせたいのに、もう一文字も曲が書けなくなってしまった」と呟いた。同時期、ラヴェルは神経学者T・アラジョアニヌ博士の診察を受けるが、博士は失語症や理解障害など脳神経学的な症状であると判断した。しかし脳内出血などを疑っていたラヴェルの弟のエドゥアールや友人たちはその診断に納得せず、1937年12月17日に脳外科医のC.ヴァンサン教授の執刀のもとで手術を受けた。しかし腫瘍も出血も発見されず、脳の一部に若干の委縮が見られただけだった。しかも左脳の症状であるにもかかわらず右脳を開頭し、萎縮した脳を膨らまそうとして水を注入するなど、ほとんど無意味なものだった。手術後は一時的に容体が改善したが、まもなく昏睡状態に陥り、意識が戻らぬまま12月28日に息を引き取った。62歳であった。会葬にはダリウス・ミヨー、フランシス・プーランク、イーゴリ・ストラヴィンスキーらが立会い、遺体はルヴァロワ=ペレ(パリ西北郊)に埋葬された。
晩年を過ごしたイヴリーヌ県モンフォール=ラモーリーにあるラヴェルの最後の家は、現在ラヴェル博物館(Musée Maurice Ravel)となっている。浮世絵を含む絵画や玩具のコレクション、作曲に用いられたピアノなどが展示されている。
ラヴェルは一生独身を貫き、弟のエドゥワールも晩婚で子供をもうけなかったためラヴェル家の血筋はエドゥワールの死(1960年)をもって永遠に途絶えた。
「オーケストレーションの天才」「管弦楽の魔術師」と言われる卓越した管弦楽法と「スイスの時計職人」(ストラヴィンスキー談)と評価される精緻な書法が特徴的。
母方の血筋であるスペインへの関心は様々な楽曲に見出だされ、『ヴァイオリン・ソナタ』、『左手のためのピアノ協奏曲』、『ピアノ協奏曲 ト長調』などにはジャズの語法の影響も見られる。
ラヴェルはドビュッシーと共に印象派(印象主義)の作曲家に分類されることが多い。しかし、ラヴェルの作品はより強く古典的な曲形式に立脚しており、ドビュッシーとは一線を画すと同時にラヴェル本人も印象派か否かという問題は意に介さなかった。ただし自身への影響を否定はしながらも、ドビュッシーを尊敬・評価し、1902年には実際に対面も果たしている。また、ドビュッシーもラヴェルの弦楽四重奏曲ヘ長調を高く評価するコメントを発表している。
ラヴェル自身はモーツァルト及びフランソワ・クープランからはるかに強く影響を受けていると主張した。また彼はエマニュエル・シャブリエ、エリック・サティの影響を自ら挙げており、「エドヴァルド・グリーグの影響を受けてない音符を書いたことがありません」とも述べている。更に先述のようにスペイン音楽、ジャズに加え、アジアの音楽及びフォークソング(俗謡)を含む世界各地の音楽に強い影響を受けていた。アジアの音楽については、パリ音楽院に入学した14歳の春に、パリ万国博覧会で出会ったカンボジアの寺院、タヒチ島の人々の踊り、インドネシアのガムランなどに大きな影響を受けている。
ラヴェルは、また、リヒャルト・ワーグナーの楽曲に代表されるような宗教的テーマを表現することを好まず、その代わりにインスピレーション重視の古典的神話に題を取ることをより好んだ。
ピアノ協奏曲ト長調について、ラヴェルは、モーツァルトおよびサン=サーンスの協奏曲がそのモデルとして役立ったと語った。彼は1906年頃に協奏曲『Zazpiak Bat』(「バスク風のピアノ協奏曲」。直訳だと「7集まって1となる」というバスク人のスローガン)を書くつもりであったが、それは完成されなかった。ノートからの残存や断片で、これがバスクの音楽から強い影響を受けていることを確認できる。ラヴェルはこの作品を放棄したが、かわりにピアノ協奏曲など他の作品のいくつかの部分で、そのテーマとリズムを使用している。
ラヴェルは、「アンドレ・ジェダルジュ(André Gedalge)[11]は私の作曲技術の開発において非常に重要な人でした」とコメントしている(ジェダルジュは対位法教程を残した最初期の作曲家でもある)。
「作曲家は創作に際して個人と国民意識、つまり民族性の両方を意識する必要がある」と言うのがラヴェルの考え方であった。1928年、アメリカとカナダの25都市の大きなコンサート・ホールでピアノ公演を行なうため渡米した際も、アメリカの作曲家達に「ヨーロッパの模倣ではなく、民族主義スタイルの音楽としてのジャズとブルースを意識した作品を作るべきだ」と述べており、一説によればオーケストレーションの教えを乞うたジョージ・ガーシュウィンに対して「あなたは既に一流のガーシュウィンなのだから、二流のラヴェルになる必要などない」と言ったといわれている。
彼の曲を得意とするピアニストはマルグリット・ロンや彼女の弟子のサンソン・フランソワなどがいるが、特にラヴェル本人から楽曲について細かいアドヴァイスを受ける機会があったヴラド・ペルルミュテールは、ラヴェルの意図を忠実に再現した「ラヴェル弾き」と言われる。
※括弧内の西暦は作曲年
|
ウィキメディア・コモンズには、モーリス・ラヴェルに関連するカテゴリがあります。 |
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer known especially for his melodies, masterful orchestration, richly evocative harmonies and inventive instrumental textures and effects. Along with Claude Debussy, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music is part of the standard concert repertoire.
Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his mastery of orchestration is particularly evident in such works as Rapsodie espagnole, Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel is best known for his orchestral work Boléro (1928), which he once described as "a piece for orchestra without music".[1]
According to SACEM, as recently as 2009 Ravel has been on the list of the top 20 artists whose works have generated the most royalties abroad.[2]
Ravel was born in 1875, in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, 18 kilometres (11 mi) from the Spanish border. His mother, Marie Delouart, was Basque – according to Ravel's biographer, Roger Nichols, "illegitimate" and "practically illiterate"[3] – and had grown up in Madrid, Spain, while his father, Joseph Ravel, was an educated and successful engineer, a Swiss inventor and industrialist from French Haute-Savoie.[4] Both were Catholics and they provided a happy and stimulating household for their children. Some of Joseph's inventions were quite important, including an early internal combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death", an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a success until a fatal accident at the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1903.[5] Joseph delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, and he also had a keen interest in music and culture.[6] Ravel substantiated his father's early influence by stating later, “As a child, I was sensitive to music—to every kind of music.”[7]
Ravel was very fond of his mother, and her Basque-Spanish heritage was a strong influence on his life and music. Among his earliest memories are folk songs she sang to him.[8] The family moved to Paris three months after the birth of Maurice, and there his younger brother Édouard was born in 1878. Édouard became his father’s favorite and also became an engineer.[8] At age six, Maurice began piano lessons with Henry Ghys and received his first instruction in harmony, counterpoint, and composition with Charles-René. His earliest public piano recital was in 1889 at age fourteen.[9]
Though obviously talented at the piano, Ravel demonstrated a preference for composing. He was particularly impressed by the new Russian works conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Exposition Universelle in 1889.[10][11] The foreign music at the exhibition also had a great influence on Ravel's contemporaries Erik Satie, Emmanuel Chabrier, and most significantly Claude Debussy. Two years earlier Ravel had met Ricardo Viñes, who would become one of his best friends, one of the foremost interpreters of his piano music, and an important link between Ravel and Spanish music.[12] The students shared an appreciation for Richard Wagner, the Russian school, and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé.[13]
Ravel’s parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. His teachers included Émile Decombes. He received a first prize in the piano student competition in 1891.[14] Overall, however, he was not successful academically even as his musicianship matured dramatically. Considered "very gifted", Ravel was also called "somewhat heedless" in his studies.[14] Around 1893, Ravel created his earliest compositions, and he was introduced by his father to the café pianist Erik Satie, whose distinctive personality and unorthodox musical experiments proved influential.[13]
Ravel was not a "bohemian" and evidenced little of the typical trauma of adolescence. At twenty years of age, Ravel was already "self-possessed, a little aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter."[15] He dressed like a dandy and was meticulous about his appearance and demeanor. Short in stature, light in frame, and bony in features, Ravel had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey".[16] His large head seemed suitably matched to his great intellect. He was well-read and later accumulated a library of over 1,000 volumes.[16] In his younger adulthood, Ravel was usually bearded in the fashion of the day, though later he dispensed with all whiskers. Though reserved, Ravel was sensitive and self-critical, and had a mischievous sense of humor.[15] He became a lifelong tobacco smoker in his youth, and he enjoyed strongly flavored meals, fine wine, and spirited conversation.[17]
After failing to meet the requirement of earning a competitive medal in three consecutive years, Ravel was expelled in 1895. He turned down a music professorship in Tunisia then returned to the Conservatoire in 1898 and started his studies with Gabriel Fauré, determined to focus on composing rather than piano playing.[18] He studied composition with Fauré until he was dismissed from the class in 1900 for having won neither the fugue nor the composition prize. He remained an auditor with Fauré until he left the Conservatoire in 1903.[19] Ravel found his teacher’s personality and methods sympathetic and they remained friends and colleagues. He also undertook private studies with André Gedalge, whom he later stated was responsible for "the most valuable elements of my technique."[20] Ravel studied the ability of each instrument carefully in order to determine the possible effects, and was sensitive to their color and timbre. This may account for his success as an orchestrator and as a transcriber of his own piano works and those of other composers, such as Mussorgsky, Debussy and Schumann.[21]
His first significant work, Habanera for two pianos, was later transcribed into the well-known third movement of his Rapsodie espagnole, which he dedicated to Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, another of his professors at the Conservatoire. His first published work was Menuet antique, dedicated to and premiered by Viñes.[22] In 1899, Ravel conducted his first orchestral piece, Shéhérazade, ouverture de féerie, and was greeted by a raucous mixture of boos and applause. Critics termed the piece "a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian School" and called Ravel a "mediocrely gifted debutante ... who will perhaps become something if not someone in about ten years, if he works hard."[23] As the most gifted composer of his class and as a leader, with Debussy, of avant-garde French music, Ravel would continue to have a difficult time with the critics for some time to come.[24]
|
Pavane pour une infante défunte
Performed by Thérèse Dussaut.
|
Problems playing this file? See media help. |
Around 1900, Ravel joined with a number of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians who were referred to as the Apaches (hooligans), a name coined by Viñes to represent his band of "artistic outcasts".[25] The group met regularly until the beginning of World War I and the members often inspired each other with intellectual argument and performances of their works before the group. For a time, the influential group included Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla.[26] One of the first works Ravel performed for the Apaches was Jeux d'eau, his first piano masterpiece and clearly a pathfinding impressionistic work. Viñes performed the public premiere of this piece and Ravel's other early masterpiece Pavane pour une infante défunte in 1902.[27]
During his years at the Conservatoire, Ravel tried numerous times to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, but to no avail; he was probably considered too radical by the conservatives, including Director Théodore Dubois.[28] Ravel's String Quartet in F, probably modeled on Debussy’s Quartet (1893), is now a standard work of chamber music, though at the time it was criticized and found lacking academically.[29] In 1905, Ravel's final year of eligibility for the Prix de Rome, Ravel did not even pass the preliminary test, despite being favored to win one of the two first prizes available.[30] Instead, all six selected finalists were students of Charles Lenepveu, a member of the jury and heir apparent of Dubois as director of the Conservatoire. The scandal – named the "Ravel Affair" by the Parisian press – engaged the entire artistic community, pitting conservatives against the avant-garde, and eventually caused the resignation of Dubois and his replacement by Fauré instead of Lenepveu, a vindication of sorts for Ravel.[31] Alfred Edwards, editor of Le Matin, who had taken particular interest in the incident, took Ravel on a seven-week canal trip on his yacht Aimée through the Low Countries in June and July 1905, the first time Ravel traveled abroad.[32] Though deprived of the opportunity to study in Rome, the decade after the scandal proved to be Ravel's most productive, and included his "Spanish period".[33]
Ravel met Debussy in the 1890s. Debussy was older than Ravel by twelve years and his pioneering Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was influential among the younger musicians including Ravel, who were impressed by the new language of impressionism.[34] In 1900, Ravel was invited to Debussy’s home and they played each other’s works. Viñes became the preferred piano performer for both composers and a go-between. The two composers attended many of the same musical events and were performed at the same concerts. Ravel and the Apaches were strong supporters of Debussy’s controversial public debut of his unconventional opera Pelléas et Mélisande, which garnered Debussy both fame and scorn.[28]
The two musicians also appreciated much the same musical heritage and operated in the same artistic milieu, but they differed in terms of personality and their approach to music. Debussy was considered more spontaneous and casual in his composing while Ravel was more attentive to form and craftsmanship.[35] Even though they worked independently of one another, because they employed differing means to similar ends, and because superficial similarities and even some more substantive ones are evident, the public and the critics associated them more than the facts warranted.[36]
Ravel wrote that Debussy's "genius was obviously one of great individuality, creating its own laws, constantly in evolution, expressing itself freely, yet always faithful to French tradition. For Debussy, the musician and the man, I have had profound admiration, but by nature I am different from Debussy."[37] Ravel further stated, "I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy."[18]
They admired each other's music and Ravel even played Debussy's work in public on occasion. However, Ravel did criticize Debussy sometimes, particularly regarding his orchestration, and he once said, "If I had the time, I would reorchestrate La mer."[35]
By 1905, factions formed for each composer and the two groups began feuding in public. Disputes arose as to questions of chronology about their respective works and who influenced whom. The public tension caused personal estrangement.[38] As Ravel said, "It is probably better after all for us to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons."[36] Ravel stoically absorbed superficial comparisons with Debussy promulgated by biased critics, including Pierre Lalo, an anti-Ravel critic who stated, "Where M. Debussy is all sensitivity, M. Ravel is all insensitivity, borrowing without hesitation not only technique but the sensitivity of other people."[38] During 1913, in a remarkable coincidence, both Ravel and Debussy independently produced and published musical settings for poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, again provoking comparisons of their work and their perceived influence on each other, which continued even after Debussy’s death five years later.[39]
The next of Ravel’s piano compositions to become famous was Miroirs (Mirrors, 1905), five piano pieces which marked a "harmonic evolution" and which one commentator described as "intensely descriptive and pictorial. They banish all sentiment in expression but offer to the listener a number of refined sensory elements which can be appreciated according to his imagination."[40] Next was his Histoires naturelles (Nature Stories), five humorous songs evoking the presence of five animals.[41] Two years later, Ravel completed his Rapsodie espagnole, his first major "Spanish" piece, written first for piano four hands and then scored for orchestra. Though it employs folk-like melodies, no actual folk songs are quoted.[42] It premiered in 1908 to generally good reviews, with one critic stating that it was "one of the most interesting novelties of the season", while Pierre Lalo (as usual) reacted negatively, calling it "laborious and pedantic".[43] Next followed Ravel's music for the opera L'heure espagnole (The Spanish Hour), full of humor and rich in color, employing a wide variety of instruments and their characteristic qualities, including the trombone, sarrusophone, tuba, celesta, xylophone, and bells.[44] The libretto was by Franc-Nohain, after his own comedy of the same name.
Ravel further extended his mastery of impressionistic piano music with Gaspard de la nuit, based on a collection of the same name by Aloysius Bertrand, with some influence from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, particularly in the second part.[45] Viñes, as usual, performed the premiere but his performance displeased Ravel, and their relationship became strained from then on. For future premieres, Ravel replaced Viñes with Marguerite Long.[46] Also unhappy with the conservative musical establishment which was discouraging performance of new music, around this time Ravel, Fauré and some of his pupils formed the Société musicale indépendante (SMI). In 1910, the society presented the premiere of Ravel's Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose) in its original piano duet version.[47] With this work, Ravel followed in the tradition of Schumann, Mussorgsky, and Debussy, who also created memorable works of childhood themes. In 1912, Ravel's Ma mère l'oye was performed as a ballet (with added music) after being first transcribed from piano to orchestra.[48] Looking to expand his contacts and career, Ravel made his first foreign tours to England and Scotland during 1909 and 1911.[49]
Ravel began work with impresario Sergei Diaghilev during 1909 for the ballet Daphnis et Chloé commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the famous ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev had taken Paris by storm the previous year in his Parisian opera debut, Boris Godunov.[48] Daphnis et Chloé took three years to complete, with conflicts constantly arising among the principal artists, including Léon Bakst (sets and costumes), Michel Fokine (libretto), and Ravel (music).[50] In frustration, Diaghilev nearly cancelled the project. The ballet had an unenthusiastic reception and lasted only two performances, only to be revived to acclaim a year later. Igor Stravinsky called Daphnis et Chloé "one of the most beautiful products of all French music" and author Burnett James claims that it is "Ravel's most impressive single achievement, as it is his most opulent and confident orchestral score".[51] The work is notable for its rhythmic diversity, lyricism, and evocations of nature. The score utilizes a large orchestra and two choruses, one onstage and one offstage.[52] So exhausting was the effort to score the ballet that Ravel's health deteriorated, with a diagnosis of neurasthenia soon forcing him to rest for several months.[53] During 1914, just as World War I began, Ravel composed his Piano Trio (for piano, violin, and cello) with its Basque themes. The piece, difficult to play well, is considered a masterpiece among trio works.[54]
Although he considered his small stature of 1.61 metres (5 ft 3 in)[55] and light weight an advantage to becoming an aviator, and he tried every means of securing service as a flyer, during the First World War Ravel was not allowed to enlist as a pilot because of his age and weak health.[56] Instead, he became a truck driver stationed at the Verdun front.[57] With his mother's death in 1917, his fondest relationship ended and he fell into a "horrible despair", adding to his ill health and the general gloom over the suffering endured by the people of his country during the war. However, during the war years, Ravel did manage some compositions, including one of his most popular works, Le tombeau de Couperin, a commemoration of the musical ideals of François Couperin, the early 18th-century composer, which premiered in 1919.[58] Each movement is dedicated to a friend of Ravel's who died in the war, with the final movement dedicated to the deceased husband[59] of Ravel’s favorite pianist Marguerite Long.[58] During the war, the Ligue Nationale pour la Defense de la Musique Française (National League for the Defense of French Music) was formed but Ravel, despite his strong antipathy for the German aggression, declined to join stating:
"it would be dangerous for French composers to ignore systematically the works of their foreign colleagues, and thus form themselves into a sort of national coterie: our musical art, so rich at the present time, would soon degenerate and become isolated by its own academic formulas."[57]
Ravel was exhausted and lacking creative spirit at the war’s end in 1918. With the death of Debussy and the emergence of Satie, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, modern classical music had a new style to which Ravel would shortly re-group and make his contribution.[60]
Around 1920, Diaghilev commissioned Ravel to write La valse (The Waltz), originally named Wien (Vienna), which was to be used for a projected ballet. The piece, conceived many years earlier, became a waltz with a macabre undertone, famous for its "fantastic and fatal whirling". However, it was rejected by Diaghilev as "not a ballet. It's a portrait of ballet". Ravel, hurt by the comment, ended the relationship.[61] Subsequently, it became a popular concert work and when the two men met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev's hand. Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel, but friends persuaded Diaghilev to recant. The two never met again.[62]
In 1920, the French government awarded Ravel the Légion d'honneur, but he refused it.[63] The next year, he retired to the French countryside where he continued to write music, albeit even less prolifically, but in more tranquil surroundings.[64] He returned regularly to Paris for performances and socializing, and increased his foreign concert tours. Ravel maintained his influential participation with the SMI which continued its active role of promoting new music, particularly of British and American composers such as Arnold Bax, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, and Virgil Thomson.[65] With Debussy's death, Ravel became perceived popularly as the main composer of French classical music. As Fauré stated in a letter to Ravel in October 1922, "I am happier than you can imagine about the solid position which you occupy and which you have acquired so brilliantly and so rapidly. It is a source of joy and pride for your old professor."[66] In 1922, Ravel completed his Sonata for Violin and Cello. Dedicated to Debussy’s memory, the work features the thinner texture popular with the younger postwar composers.[66]
The English, in particular, lauded Ravel, as The Times reported on 16 April 1923, "Since the death of Debussy, he has represented to English musicians the most vigorous current in modern French music."[66] In reality, however, Ravel's own music was no longer considered au courant in France. Satie had become the inspiring force for the new generation of French composers known as Les Six.[67] Ravel was fully aware of this, and was mostly effective in preventing a serious breach between his generation of musicians and the younger group.[67]
In post-war Paris, American musical influence was strong. Jazz particularly was played in the cafes and became popular, and French composers including Ravel and Darius Milhaud were applying jazz elements to their work.[21] Also in vogue was a return to simplicity in orchestration and a transition from the great scale of the works of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev were in the ascendant, and Arnold Schoenberg's experiments were leading music into atonality.[68] These trends posed challenges for Ravel, always a slow and deliberate composer, who desired to keep his music relevant but still revered the past. This may have played a part in his declining output and longer composing time during the 1920s.[68]
Around 1922, Ravel completed his famous orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky, which through its widespread popularity brought Ravel great fame and substantial profit.[21] The first half of the 1920s was a particularly lean period for composing but Ravel did complete successful concert tours to Amsterdam, Milan, London, Madrid, and Vienna, which also boosted his fame. By 1925, by virtue of the unwelcomed pressure of a performance deadline, he finally finished his opera L'enfant et les sortilèges, with its significant jazz and ragtime accents. Famed writer Colette provided the libretto.[69] Around this time, he also completed Chansons madécasses, the summit of his vocal art.[70]
In 1927, Ravel's String Quartet received its first complete recording. By this time Ravel, like Edward Elgar, had become convinced of the importance of recording his works, especially with his input and direction. He made recordings nearly every year from then until his death.[71] That same year, he completed and premiered his Sonata for Violin and Piano, his last chamber work, with its second movement (titled “Blues”) gaining much attention.[72]
Ravel also served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.[73]
After two months of planning, in 1928 Ravel made a four-month concert tour in North America, for a promised minimum of $10,000[71] (approximately $137,000, adjusted for inflation[74]). In New York City, he received a standing ovation, unlike any of his unenthusiastic premieres in Paris. His all-Ravel concert in Boston was equally acclaimed.[75] The noted critic Olin Downes wrote, "Mr. Ravel has pursued his way as an artist quietly and very well. He has disdained superficial or meretricious effects. He has been his own most unsparing critic."[76] Ravel conducted most of the leading orchestras in the U.S. from coast to coast and visited twenty-five cities.[77]
He also met the American composer George Gershwin in New York and went with him to hear jazz in Harlem, probably hearing some of the famous jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington.[78] There is a story that when Gershwin met Ravel, he mentioned that he would like to study with the French composer. According to Gershwin, the Frenchman retorted, "Why do you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?"[79] The second part of the story has Ravel asking Gershwin how much money he made. Upon hearing Gershwin's reply, Ravel suggested that maybe he should study with Gershwin. This tale may well be apocryphal: Gershwin seems also to have told a near-identical story about a conversation with Arnold Schoenberg, and some have claimed it was with Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen. It is even recorded that Gershwin attempted to contact Charles Ives at Ives's insurance firm for the same reason, but Ives was on vacation at the time. (See George Gershwin.) In any event, this had to have been before Ravel wrote Boléro, which became financially very successful for him.
Ravel then visited New Orleans and imbibed the jazz scene there as well. His admiration of jazz, increased by his American visit, caused him to include some jazz elements in a few of his later compositions, especially the two piano concertos. The great success of his American tour made Ravel famous internationally.[80]
After returning to France, Ravel composed his most famous and controversial orchestral work Boléro, originally called Fandango. Ravel called it "an experiment in a very special and limited direction".[81] He stated his idea for the piece, "I am going to try to repeat it a number of times on different orchestral levels but without any development."[82] He conceived of it as an accompaniment to a ballet and not as an orchestral piece as, in his own opinion, "it has no music in it", and was somewhat taken aback by its popular success.[82] A public dispute began with conductor Arturo Toscanini. The Italian maestro, taking liberties with Ravel's strict instructions, conducted the piece at a faster tempo and with an "accelerando at the finish". Ravel insisted "I don’t ask for my music to be interpreted, but only that it should be played." In the end, the feuding only helped to increase the work's fame. A Hollywood film titled Bolero (1934), starring Carole Lombard and George Raft, made major use of the theme.[83] Ravel made one of the few recordings of his own music when he conducted his Boléro with the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1930.
Remarkably, Ravel composed both of his piano concertos simultaneously.[84] He completed the Concerto for the Left Hand first. The work was commissioned by Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during World War I. Ravel was inspired by the technical challenges of the project. As Ravel stated, "In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands."[85] Ravel, not proficient enough to perform the work with only his left hand, demonstrated it with two-hands and Wittgenstein was reportedly underwhelmed by it. But later Wittgenstein stated, "Only much later, after I'd studied the concerto for months, did I become fascinated by it and realized what a great work it was."[86] In 1933, Wittgenstein played the work in concert for the first time to instant acclaim.[87] Critic Henry Prunières wrote, "From the opening measures, we are plunged into a world in which Ravel has but rarely introduced us."[87]
The other piano concerto was completed a year later. Its lighter tone follows the models of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, and also makes use of jazz-like themes.[88] Ravel dedicated the work to his favorite pianist, Marguerite Long, who played it and popularized it across Europe in over twenty cities, and they recorded it together in 1932.[89] EMI later reissued the 1932 recording on LP and CD. Although Ravel was listed as the conductor on the original 78-rpm discs, it is possible he merely supervised the recording.
Ravel, ever modest, was bemused by the critics' sudden favor of him since his American tour: "Didn't I represent to the critics for a long time the most perfect example of insensitivity and lack of emotion? ... And the successes they have given me in the past few years are just as unimportant.'[87]
In 1932, Ravel suffered a major blow to the head in a taxi accident. This injury was not considered serious at the time.[90] However, afterwards he began to experience aphasia-like symptoms and was frequently absent-minded.[91] It is also possible he had begun experiencing the early stages of Pick's disease. He had begun work on music for a film, Don Quixote (1933) from Miguel de Cervantes's celebrated novel, featuring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and directed by G. W. Pabst. When Ravel became unable to compose, and could not write down the musical ideas he heard in his mind, Pabst hired Jacques Ibert. However, three songs for baritone and orchestra that Ravel composed for the film were later published under the title Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, and have been performed and recorded.[90]
On April 8, 2008, the New York Times published an article suggesting Ravel may have been in the early stages of frontotemporal dementia during 1928, and this might account for the repetitive nature of Boléro.[92] This accords with an earlier article, published in a journal of neurology, that closely examines Ravel's clinical history and argues that Boléro and the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand both indicate the impacts of neurological disease.[93] This is contradicted, however, by the earlier cited comments by Ravel about how he created the deliberately repetitious theme for Boléro.[94]
In late 1937, Ravel consented to experimental brain surgery, evidently with some hesitation. On 17 December, he entered a hospital in Paris, following the advice of the well-known neurosurgeon Clovis Vincent. Vincent assumed there was a brain tumor, and on 19 December operated on Ravel. No tumor was found, but there was some shrinkage of the left hemisphere of his brain, which was re-inflated with serous fluid. When Ravel awoke from the anesthesia, he asked for his brother, but quickly sank into a deep coma, from which he never awoke.[95] He died on 28 December at the age of 62, in Paris. His friend Maurice Delage was with him at his death.
Ravel's death was probably a result of the brain surgery, with the underlying cause arguably being a brain injury caused by the automobile accident in 1932, and not from a brain tumor as some believe.[96] This confusion may arise because his friend George Gershwin had died from a brain tumor only five months earlier.
On 30 December 1937, Ravel was buried next to his parents in a granite tomb at the cemetery at Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris. Ravel was an atheist.[97]
Ravel never married and had no children. He is not known to have had any intimate relationships at all, and his personal life remains a mystery. Ravel made a remark at one time suggesting that because he was such a perfectionist composer, so devoted to his work, he could never have a lasting intimate relationship with anyone.[98] However, according to close friend and student Manuel Rosenthal, he asked violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange to marry him, although she dismissed him, saying "No, Maurice, I'm extremely fond of you, as you know, but only as a friend, and I couldn't possibly consider marrying you".[99] He is quoted as saying "The only love affair I have ever had was with music".[100] Some of his friends suggested that Ravel frequented the bordellos of Paris, but no factual evidence has ever been found to substantiate this rumor.[101]
A recent hypothesis presented by David Lamaze, a composition teacher at the Conservatoire de Rennes in France, is that he hid in his music representations of the nickname and the name of Misia Godebska, transcribed into two groups of notes, Godebska = G D E B A and Misia = Mi + Si + A = E B A. He was invited onto her boat during a 1905 cruise on the Rhine after his failure at the Prix de Rome, for which her husband, Alfred Edwards, organized a scandal in the newspapers. This same man owned the Casino de Paris where the Ravel family had a number staged, Tourbillon de la mort ("Whirlwind of Death"). The family of her half-brother, Cipa Godebski, is said to have been like a second family for Ravel. In 1907 on Misia's boat L'Aimée, Ravel completed L'heure espagnole and the Rapsodie espagnole, and at the premiere of Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel arrived late and did not go to his box but to Misia's, where he offered her a Japanese doll. In her memoirs, Misia hid all these facts.[102]
In his Maurice Ravel: A Life, published in 2000, biographer Benjamin Ivry presents evidence in support of his thesis that Ravel's lack of known intimate relationships may be explained if he was a "very secretive" gay man. Ivry also attempts to illustrate examples where Ravel's sexuality may have been expressed in his musical compositions. In his review[103] of Ivry's biography for Library Journal Larry Lipkis is persuaded by Ivry's research that "There seems to be little question that Ravel was an affected, intensely secretive dandy with gay inclinations", but also expresses the view that Ivry's work is less persuasive in definitively linking Ravel's sexuality to characteristics of his musical oeuvre.
Many of Ravel's works are protected by copyright in the US. In countries where copyright extends for the life of the composer plus fifty years, such as Canada,[104] or plus seventy years, such as the EU, Ravel's works fell into the public domain in December 1987 or January 1, 2008.
The composer died childless and left everything to his brother Edouard who turned Ravel's house into a museum. Edouard was severely injured in a car accident in 1954 and required near constant care. In 1957, Edouard announced his intention to deed 80% of the composer's posthumous royalties to the city of Paris and endow a Nobel Prize in music.
Instead, Edouard consigned the rights to his nurse, Jeanne Taverne, and her husband Alexandre, a chauffeur. When Edouard Ravel died in 1960, the Ravel estate fell subject to extensive litigation for ten years, reaching France's highest appellate court. Jeanne Taverne died before the litigation ended. During this period, Jean-Jacques Lemoine, the legal director of SACEM (the organization that collects and distributes royalties in France), froze distribution of Ravel's account.
When the litigation concluded, Lemoine resigned from SACEM and set up a shell company, Arima, with Alexandre Taverne for collecting Ravel's royalties. The company is based in Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands in order to avoid French taxes. The two also sued Ravel's publisher, then nearing retirement, to re-write the original contracts, consigning a greater percentage of the royalties to Arima than Durand's publisher. Since that time, the shell company has collected at least £30m and none of Ravel's estate has gone to the Ravel family or to further the cause of French music.[105]
Active during a period of great artistic innovation and diversification, Ravel benefited from many sources and influences, though his music defies any facile classification. As Vladimir Jankélévitch notes in his biography, "no influence can claim to have conquered him entirely [...]. Ravel remains ungraspable behind all these masks which the snobbery of the century has attempted to impose."[106]
Ravel's musical language was ultimately very original, neither absolutely modernist nor impressionist. Like Debussy, Ravel categorically refused this description of “impressionist” which he believed was reserved exclusively for painting.[107]
Ravel was a remarkable synthesist of disparate styles. His music matured early into his innovative and distinct style. As a student, he studied the scores of composers of the past methodically: as he stated, "in order to know one's own craft, one must study the craft of others."[108] Though he liked the new French music, during his youth Ravel still felt fond of the older French styles of Franck and the Romanticism of Beethoven and Wagner.[15] Or, as Viñes put it, discussing Ravel's aesthetics (not his religion):
"He is, moreover, very complicated, there being in him a mixture of Middle Ages Catholicism and satanic impiety, but also a love of Art and Beauty which guide him and which make him react candidly."[108]
Certain aspects of his music can be considered to belong to the tradition of 18th-century French classicism beginning with Couperin and Rameau as in Le Tombeau de Couperin. The uniquely 19th-century French sensibilities of Fauré and Chabrier are reflected in Sérénade grotesque, Pavane pour une infante défunte, and Menuet antique, while pieces such as Jeux d'eau, and the String Quartet in F owe something to the innovations of Satie and Debussy. The virtuosity and poetry of Gaspard de la nuit and the Concerto for the Left Hand hint at Liszt and Chopin. His admiration for American jazz is echoed in L'enfant et les sortilèges, the Violin Sonata and the Piano Concerto in G, while the Russian school of music inspired homage in "À la manière de Borodin" and the orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Additionally, he variously cited Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Schubert and Schoenberg as inspirations for various pieces.
Ravel's music was innovative, though he did not follow the contemporary trend towards atonality, as pioneered by Schoenberg. Instead, he applied the aesthetics of the new French school of Chabrier, Satie, and particularly Debussy. Ravel's compositions rely upon modal melodies instead of using the major or minor scales for their predominant harmonic language. He preferred modes with major or minor flavors; for example, the Mixolydian instead of the major scale, and the Aeolian instead of the harmonic minor. As a result, there are virtually no leading tones in his output. Melodically, he tended to favor two modes: the Dorian and the Phrygian.[109] Following the teachings of Gédalge, Ravel placed high importance on melody, once stating to Vaughan Williams, that there is "an implied melodic outline in all vital music."[109]
In no way dependent on exclusively traditional modal practices, Ravel used extended harmonies and intricate modulations. He was fond of chords of the ninth and eleventh, and his characteristic harmonies are largely the result of a fondness for unresolved appoggiaturas, such as in the Valses nobles et sentimentales.[110] He was inspired by various dances, his favorite being the minuet, composing the Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn in 1909, to commemorate the centenary of the death of Joseph Haydn. Other forms from which Ravel drew material include the forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera, passacaglia, and the boléro.
He believed that composers should be aware of both individual and national consciousness. For him, Basque music was influential. He intended to write an earlier concerto, Zazpiak Bat, but it was never finished. The title is a result of his Basque heritage: meaning 'The Seven Are One' (see Zazpiak Bat), it refers to the seven Basque regions, and was a motto often used in association with the idea of a Basque nation.[111] Instead, Ravel abandoned the piece, using its nationalistic themes and rhythms in some of his other pieces. Ravel also used other folk themes including Hebraic, Greek, and Hungarian.[112]
Ravel has almost always been considered one of the two great French impressionist composers, the other being Debussy. In reality Ravel was much more than an Impressionist (and in fact he resented being labelled as such). For example, he made extensive use of rollicking jazz tunes in his Piano Concerto in G Major in the first and third movements.[113] Ravel also imitates Paganini's and Liszt's virtuoso gypsy themes and technique in Tzigane.[114] In his À la manière de...Borodine (In the manner of...Borodin), Ravel plays with the ability to both mimic and remain original. In a more complex situation, A la manière de...Emmanuel Chabrier/Paraphrase sur un air de Gounod ("Faust IIème acte"), Ravel takes on a theme from Gounod's Faust and arranges it in the style of Chabrier. He also composed short pieces in the manner of Haydn and his teacher Fauré.[115] Even in writing in the style of others, Ravel's own voice as a composer remained distinct.
Ravel considered himself in many ways a classicist. He often relied on traditional forms, such as the ternary form, as well as traditional structures as ways of presenting his new melodic and rhythmic content, and his innovative harmonies.[116] Ravel stated, "If I were called upon to do so, I would ask to be allowed to identify myself with the simple pronouncements made by Mozart ... He confined himself to saying that there is nothing that music cannot undertake to do, or dare, or portray, provided it continues to charm and always remain music."[117] He often masked the sections of his structure with transitions that disguised the beginnings of the motif. This is apparent in his Valses nobles et sentimentales – inspired by Franz Schubert's collections, Valses nobles and Valses sentimentales – where the seven movements begin and end without pause, and in his chamber music where many movements are in sonata-allegro form, hiding the change from developmental sections to recapitulation.[118]
From his own experience, Ravel was cognizant of the effect of new music on the ears of the public and he insightfully wrote:
On the initial performance of a new musical composition, the first impression of the public is generally one of reaction to the more superficial elements of its music, that is to say, to its external manifestations rather than to its inner content...often it is not until years after, when the means of expression have finally surrendered all their secrets, that the real inner emotion of the music becomes apparent to the listener.[119]
His own composing method was craftsman-like and perfectionistic. Igor Stravinsky once referred to Ravel as "the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers", a reference to the intricacy and precision of Ravel's works.[120] Ravel, who sometimes spent years refining a piece, said, “My objective, therefore, is technical perfection. I can strive unceasingly to this end, since I am certain of never being able to attain it. The important thing is to get nearer to it all the time.”[121]
More specifically he stated:
”In my own compositions I judge a long period of conscious gestation necessary. During this interval I come progressively, and with growing precision, to see the form and the evolution that the final work will take in its tonality. Thus I can be occupied for several years without writing a single note of the work, after which composition goes relatively quickly. But one must spend much time in eliminating all that could be regarded as superfluous in order to realize as completely as possible the definitive clarity so much desired. The moment arrives when new conceptions must be formulated for the final composition, but they cannot be artificially forced for they come only of their own accord, often deriving their original from some far-off perception and only manifesting themselves after long years.”[120]
Michael Lanford has observed that "on at least three different published occasions, Ravel testified that 'my teacher in composition was Edgar Allan Poe because of his analysis his wonderful poem 'The Raven.' Poe taught me that true art is a perfect balance between pure intellect and emotion."[122] Therefore, he draws parallels between Ravel's working process and the readings of Poe by French scholars like Charles Baudelaire, who "believed that the ‘unity of impression, the totality of effect’ described by Poe endowed a composition ‘a very special superiority… If the first sentence is not written with the idea of preparing this final impression, the work has failed from the start. There must not creep into the entire composition a single word which is not intentional, which does not tend, directly or indirectly, to complete the premeditated design."[123]
Many of his most innovative compositions were developed first as piano music. Ravel used this miniaturist approach to build up his architecture with many finely wrought strokes. To fill the requirements of larger works, he multiplied the number of small building blocks.[116] This demonstrates the great regard he had for the piano traditions of Couperin, Scarlatti, Mozart, Chopin and Liszt.[124] For example, Gaspard de la nuit can be viewed as an extension of Liszt’s virtuosity and advanced harmonics.[125] Even Ravel’s most difficult pieces, however, are marked by elegance and refinement. Walter Gieseking found some of Ravel’s piano works to be among the most difficult pieces for the instrument but always based on “musically perfectly logical concepts”; not just technically demanding but also requiring the right expression.[124]
Ravel’s great regard as an orchestrator is also based on his thorough methods. He usually notated the string parts first and insisted that the string section “sound perfectly in and of itself”.[126] In writing for the other sections, he often preferred to score in tutti to produce a full, clear resonance. To add surprise and added color, the melody might start with one instrument and be continued with another.[127]
Because of his perfectionism and methods, Ravel’s musical output over four decades is quite small. Most of his works were thought out over considerable lengths of time, then notated quickly, and refined painstakingly.[128] When a piece would not progress, he would abandon a piece until inspired anew.[129] There are only about sixty compositions in all, of which slightly more than half are instrumental. Ravel’s body of work includes pieces for piano, chamber works, two piano concerti, ballet music, opera, and song cycles.[7] Though wide-ranging in his music, Ravel avoided the symphonic form as well as religious themes and forms.[130]
Ravel crafted his manuscripts meticulously, and relentlessly polished and corrected them. He destroyed hundreds of sketches and even re-copied entire autographs to correct one mistake. Early printed editions of his works were prone to errors so he worked painstakingly with his publisher, Durand, to correct them.[128]
Though a competent pianist, Ravel decided early on to have virtuosi, like Ricardo Viñes, premiere and perform his work. As his career evolved, however, Ravel was again called upon to play his own piano music, and to conduct his larger works, particularly during a tour, both of which he considered chores in the same mold as "circus performances". Only rarely did he conduct works of other composers.[131] One London critic stated "His baton is not the magician's wand of a virtuoso conductor. He just stood there beating time and keeping watch".[132] As to how his music was to be played, Ravel was always clear and direct with his instructions.[132]
Ravel was and is a leading figure in the art of transcription and orchestration. During his life Ravel studied the ability of each orchestral instrument carefully in order to determine its possible effects while being sensitive to individual color and timbre.[20] Ravel regarded orchestration as a task separate from composition, involving distinct technical skills. He was always careful to ensure that the writing for each family of instruments worked in isolation as well as in the complete ensemble. While he disapproved of tampering with his own works once completed, orchestration gave him the opportunity to view works in a different context.[19] Among the most famous of his orchestral transcriptions is his own Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917) of which he orchestrated the Prelude, Forlane, Minuet, and Rigaudon movements in 1919. The orchestral version clarifies the harmonic language of the suite and brings sharpness to its classical dance rhythms. Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is best known through its orchestration by Ravel. In this version, produced in 1922, Ravel omits the Promenade between "Samuel" Goldenberg und "Schmuÿle" and Limoges and applies artistic license to some particulars of dynamics and notation as well as putting forth the virtuoso effort of a master colourist throughout.
Ravel was always a supporter of young musicians, through his society and associations and through his personal individual advice and his help in securing performance dates. His closest students included Maurice Delage, Manuel Rosenthal, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Alexis Roland-Manuel and Vlado Perlemuter.[98] Ravel modeled his teaching methods after his own teacher Gabriel Fauré, avoiding formulas and emphasizing individualism. Ravel's preferred way of teaching would be to have a conversation with his students and demonstrate his points at the piano. He was rigorous and demanding in teaching counterpoint and fugue, as he revered Johann Sebastian Bach without reservation. But in all other areas, he considered Mozart the ideal, with the perfect balance between "classical symmetry and the element of surprise", and with works of clarity, perfect craftsmanship, and measured amounts of lyricism. Often Ravel would challenge a student with "What would Mozart do?" and then ask the student to invent his own solution.[133]
Though never a paid critic as Debussy had been, Ravel had strong opinions on historical and contemporary music and musicians, which influenced his younger contemporaries. In creating his own music, he tended to avoid the more monumental composers as models, finding relatively little kinship with or inspiration from Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz or Franck. However, as an outspoken commentator on the Romantic giants, he found much of Beethoven "exasperating", Wagner's influence "pernicious" and Berlioz's harmony "clumsy". He had considerable admiration for other 19th-century masters such as Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Schubert.[134] Despite what he considered its technical deficiencies, Ravel was a strong advocate of Russian music and praised its spontaneity, orchestral color, and exoticism.[135]
Classical music portal | |
France portal | |
Ballet portal |
|title=
(help)|coauthors=
(help)|coauthors=
(help)|date=
(help)This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (January 2015) |
Find more about
Maurice Ravel |
|
Media from Commons | |
Quotations from Wikiquote | |
Source texts from Wikisource | |
Database entry Q313324 on Wikidata |
Wikilvres has original media or text related to this article:
Maurice Ravel
|
Wikisource has the text of a 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Maurice Ravel. |
|
|
|
Persondata | |
---|---|
Name | Ravel, Maurice |
Alternative names | |
Short description | Composer |
Date of birth | 1875-03-07 |
Place of birth | Ciboure, France |
Date of death | 1937-12-28 |
Place of death | Paris, France |
45810
</tbody>
</raw>
</toggledisplay>
Joseph Maurice Ravel (/rəˈvɛl/; French: [ʒozɛf mɔʁis ʁavɛl]; 7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. He made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.
As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies or church music. Many of his works exist in two versions: first, a piano score and later an orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.
Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public. From the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works; others were made under his supervision.
Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, 18 kilometres (11 mi) from the Spanish border. His father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was an educated and successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer, born in Versoix near the Franco-Swiss border.[1][n 1] His mother, Marie, née Delouart, was Basque but had grown up in Madrid. In 19th-century terms, Joseph had married beneath his status – Marie was illegitimate and barely literate – but the marriage was a happy one.[4] Some of Joseph's inventions were successful, including an early internal combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death", an automotive loop-the-loop that was a major attraction until a fatal accident at Barnum and Bailey's Circus in 1903.[5]
Both Ravel's parents were Roman Catholics; Marie was also something of a free-thinker, a trait inherited by her elder son, who was always politically and socially progressive in outlook in adult life.[6] He was baptised in the Ciboure parish church six days after he was born. The family moved to Paris three months later, and there a younger son, Édouard, was born. (He was close to his father, whom he eventually followed into the engineering profession.)[7] Maurice was particularly devoted to their mother; her Basque-Spanish heritage was a strong influence on his life and music. Among his earliest memories were folk songs she sang to him.[7] The household was not rich, but the family was comfortable, and the two boys had happy childhoods.[8]
Ravel senior delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, but he also had a keen interest in music and culture in general.[9] In later life, Ravel 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."[10] There is no record that Ravel received any formal general schooling in his early years; his biographer Roger Nichols suggests that the boy may have been chiefly educated by his father.[11]
When he was seven, Ravel started piano lessons with Henry Ghys, a friend of Emmanuel Chabrier; five years later, in 1887, he began studying harmony, counterpoint and composition with Charles-René, a pupil of Léo Delibes.[11] Without being anything of a child prodigy, he was a highly musical boy.[12] Charles-René found that Ravel's conception of music was natural to him "and not, as in the case of so many others, the result of effort".[13] Ravel's earliest known compositions date from this period: variations on a chorale by Schumann, variations on a theme by Grieg and a single movement of a piano sonata.[14] They survive only in fragmentary form.[15]
In 1888 Ravel met the young pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became not only a lifelong friend, but also one of the foremost interpreters of his works, and an important link between Ravel and Spanish music.[16] The two shared an appreciation of Wagner, Russian music, and the writings of Poe, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé.[17] At the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889, Ravel was much struck by the new Russian works conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.[18] This music had a lasting effect on both Ravel and his older contemporary Claude Debussy, as did the exotic sound of the Javanese gamelan, also heard during the Exposition.[14]
Émile Decombes took over as Ravel's piano teacher in 1889; in the same year Ravel gave his earliest public performance.[19] Aged fourteen, he took part in a concert at the Salle Érard along with other pupils of Decombes, including Reynaldo Hahn and Alfred Cortot.[20]
With the encouragement of his parents, Ravel applied for entry to France's most important musical college, the Conservatoire de Paris. In November 1889, playing music by Chopin, he passed the examination for admission to the preparatory piano class run by Eugène Anthiome.[21] Ravel won the first prize in the Conservatoire's piano competition in 1891, but otherwise he did not stand out as a student.[22] Nevertheless, these years were a time of considerable advance in his development as a composer. The musicologist Arbie Orenstein writes that for Ravel the 1890s were a period "of immense growth ... from adolescence to maturity." [23]
In 1891 Ravel progressed to the classes of Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, for piano, and Émile Pessard, for harmony.[19] He made solid, unspectacular progress, with particular encouragement from Bériot but, in the words of the musical scholar Barbara L. Kelly, he "was only teachable on his own terms".[24] His later teacher Gabriel Fauré understood this, but it was not generally acceptable to the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire of the 1890s.[24] Ravel was expelled in 1895, having won no more prizes.[n 2] His earliest works to survive in full are from these student days: Sérénade grotesque, for piano, and "Ballade de la Reine morte d'aimer",[n 3] a mélodie setting a poem by Rolande de Marès (both 1893).[14]
Ravel was never so assiduous a student of the piano as his colleagues such as Viñes and Cortot were.[n 4] It was plain that as a pianist he would never match them, and his overriding ambition was to be a composer.[22] From this point he concentrated on composition. His works from the period include the songs "Un grand sommeil noir" and "D'Anne jouant de l'espinette" to words by Paul Verlaine and Clément Marot,[14][n 5] and the piano pieces Menuet antique and Habanera (for four-hands), the latter eventually incorporated into the Rapsodie espagnole.[27] At around this time, Joseph Ravel introduced his son to Erik Satie, who was earning a living as a café pianist. Ravel was one of the first musicians – Debussy was another – who recognised Satie's originality and talent.[28] Satie's constant experiments in musical form were an inspiration to Ravel, who counted them "of inestimable value".[29]
In 1897 Ravel was readmitted to the Conservatoire, studying composition with Fauré, and taking private lessons in counterpoint with André Gedalge.[19] Both these teachers, particularly Fauré, regarded him highly and were key influences on his development as a composer.[14] As Ravel's course progressed, Fauré reported "a distinct gain in maturity ... engaging wealth of imagination".[30] Ravel's standing at the Conservatoire was nevertheless undermined by the hostility of the Director, Théodore Dubois, who deplored the young man's musically and politically progressive outlook.[31] Consequently, according to a fellow-student, Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, he was "a marked man, against whom all weapons were good".[32] He wrote some substantial works while studying with Fauré, including the overture Shéhérazade and a violin sonata, but he won no prizes, and therefore was expelled again in 1900. As a former student he was allowed to attend Fauré's classes as a non-participating "auditeur" until finally abandoning the Conservatoire in 1903.[33]
In 1899 Ravel composed his first piece to become widely known, though it made little impact initially: Pavane pour une infante défunte ("Pavane for a dead princess").[34] It was originally a solo piano work, commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac.[35][n 6] In 1897 he conducted the first performance of the Shéhérazade overture, which had a mixed reception, with boos mingling with applause from the audience, and unflattering reviews from the critics. One described the piece as "a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian School" and called Ravel a "mediocrely gifted debutant ... who will perhaps become something if not someone in about ten years, if he works hard."[36][n 7] Another critic, Pierre Lalo, thought that Ravel showed talent, but was too indebted to Debussy and should instead emulate Beethoven.[38] Over the succeeding decades Lalo became Ravel's most implacable critic.[38]
From the start of his career, Ravel appeared calmly indifferent to blame or praise. Those who knew him well believed that this was no pose but wholly genuine.[39] The only opinion of his music that he truly valued was his own, perfectionist and severely self-critical.[40] At twenty years of age he was, in the words of the biographer Burnett James, "self-possessed, a little aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter."[41] He dressed like a dandy and was meticulous about his appearance and demeanour.[42] Orenstein comments that, short in stature,[n 8] light in frame, and bony in features, Ravel had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey", whose large head seemed suitably matched to his formidable intellect.[43] During the late 1890s and into the early years of the next century, Ravel was bearded in the fashion of the day; from his mid-thirties he was clean-shaven.[44]
Around 1900, Ravel and a number of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians joined together in an informal group; they came to be known as Les Apaches ("The Hooligans"), a name coined by Viñes to represent their status as "artistic outcasts".[45] They met regularly until the beginning of the First World War, and members stimulated one another with intellectual argument and performances of their works. The membership of the group was fluid, and at various times included Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla as well as their French friends.[n 9]
Among the enthusiasms of the Apaches was the music of Debussy. Ravel, twelve years his junior, had known Debussy slightly since the 1890s, and their friendship, though never close, continued for more than ten years.[47] In 1902 André Messager conducted the premiere of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra-Comique. It divided musical opinion. Dubois unavailingly forbade Conservatoire students to attend, and the conductor's friend and former teacher Camille Saint-Saëns was prominent among those who detested the piece.[48] The Apaches were loud in their support.[49] The first run of the opera consisted of fourteen performances: Ravel attended all of them.[50]
Debussy was widely held to be an impressionist composer – a label he intensely disliked. Many music lovers began to apply the same term to Ravel, and the works of the two composers were frequently taken as part of a single genre.[51] Ravel thought that Debussy was indeed an impressionist but that he himself was not.[52][n 10] Orenstein comments that Debussy was more spontaneous and casual in his composing while Ravel was more attentive to form and craftsmanship.[54] Ravel wrote that Debussy's "genius was obviously one of great individuality, creating its own laws, constantly in evolution, expressing itself freely, yet always faithful to French tradition. For Debussy, the musician and the man, I have had profound admiration, but by nature I am different from Debussy ... I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of [his] symbolism".[55] During the first years of the new century Ravel's new works included the piano piece Jeux d'eau[n 11] (1901), the String Quartet and the orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade (both 1903).[56] Commentators have noted some Debussian touches in some parts of these works. Nichols calls the quartet "at once homage to and exorcism of Debussy's influence".[57]
The two composers ceased to be on friendly terms in the middle of the first decade of the 1900s, for musical and possibly personal reasons. Their admirers began to form factions, with adherents of one composer denigrating the other. Disputes arose about the chronology of the composers' works and who influenced whom.[47] Prominent in the anti-Ravel camp was Lalo, who wrote, "Where M. Debussy is all sensitivity, M. Ravel is all insensitivity, borrowing without hesitation not only technique but the sensitivity of other people."[58] The public tension led to personal estrangement.[58] Ravel said, "It's probably better for us, after all, to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons."[59] Nichols suggests an additional reason for the rift. In 1904 Debussy left his wife and went to live with the singer Emma Bardac. Ravel, together with his close friend and confidante Misia Edwards and the opera star Lucienne Bréval, contributed to a modest regular income for the deserted Lilly Debussy, a fact that Nichols suggests may have rankled with her husband.[60]
During the first years of the new century, Ravel made five attempts to win France's most prestigious prize for young composers, the Prix de Rome, past winners of which included Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet and Debussy.[61] In 1900 Ravel was eliminated in the first round; in 1901 he won the second prize for the competition.[62] In 1902 and 1903 he won nothing: according to the musicologist Paul Landormy, the judges suspected Ravel of making fun of them by submitting cantatas so academic as to seem like parodies.[56][n 12] In 1905 Ravel, by now thirty, competed for the last time, inadvertently causing a furore. He was eliminated in the first round, which even critics unsympathetic to his music, including Lalo, denounced as unjustifiable.[64] The press's indignation grew when it emerged that the senior professor at the Conservatoire, Charles Lenepveu, was on the jury, and only his students were selected for the final round;[65] his insistence that this was pure coincidence was not well received.[66] L'affaire Ravel became a national scandal, leading to the early retirement of Dubois and his replacement by Fauré, appointed by the government to carry out a radical reorganisation of the Conservatoire.[67]
Among those taking a close interest in the controversy was Alfred Edwards, owner and editor of Le Matin, for which Lalo wrote. Edwards was married to Ravel's friend Misia;[n 13] the couple took Ravel on a seven-week Rhine cruise on their yacht in June and July 1905, the first time he had travelled abroad.[69]
By the latter part of the 1900s Ravel had established a pattern of writing works for piano and subsequently arranging them for full orchestra.[70] He was in general a slow and painstaking worker, and reworking his earlier piano compositions enabled him to increase the number of pieces published and performed.[71] There appears to have been no mercenary motive for this; Ravel was known for his indifference to financial matters.[72] The pieces that began as piano compositions and were then given orchestral dress were Pavane pour une infante défunte (orchestrated 1910), Une barque sur l'océan (1906, from the 1905 piano suite Miroirs), the Habanera section of Rapsodie espagnole (1907–08), Ma mère l'Oye (1908–10, orchestrated 1911), Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911, orchestrated 1912), Alborada del gracioso (from Miroirs, orchestrated 1918) and Le tombeau de Couperin (1914–17, orchestrated 1919).[14]
Ravel was not by inclination a teacher, but he gave lessons to a few young musicians he felt could benefit from them. Manuel Rosenthal was one, and records that Ravel was a very demanding teacher when he thought his pupil had talent. Like his own teacher, Fauré, he was concerned that his pupils should find their own individual voices and not be excessively influenced by established masters.[73] He warned Rosenthal that it was impossible to learn from studying Debussy's music: "Only Debussy could have written it and made it sound like only Debussy can sound."[74] When George Gershwin asked him for lessons in the 1920s, Ravel, after serious consideration, refused, on the grounds that they "would probably cause him to write bad Ravel and lose his great gift of melody and spontaneity".[75][n 14] The best known composer who studied with Ravel was probably Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was his pupil for three months in 1907–08. Vaughan Williams recalled that Ravel helped him escape from "the heavy contrapuntal Teutonic manner ... Complexe mais pas compliqué was his motto."[77]
Vaughan Williams's recollections throw some light on Ravel's private life, about which the latter's reserved and secretive personality has led to much speculation. Vaughan Williams, Rosenthal and Marguerite Long have all recorded that Ravel frequented brothels.[78] Long attributed this to his self-consciousness about his diminutive stature, and consequent lack of confidence with women.[72] By other accounts, none of them first-hand, Ravel was in love with Misia Edwards,[68] or wanted to marry the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange.[79] Rosenthal records and discounts contemporary speculation that Ravel, a lifelong bachelor, may have been homosexual.[80] Such speculation recurred in a 2000 life of Ravel by Benjamin Ivry;[81] subsequent studies have concluded that Ravel's sexuality and personal life remain a mystery.[82]
Ravel's first concert outside France was in 1909. As the guest of the Vaughan Williamses, he visited London, where he played for the Société des Concerts Français, gaining favourable reviews and enhancing his growing international reputation.[83][n 15]
The Société Nationale de Musique, founded in 1871 to promote the music of rising French composers, had been dominated since the mid-1880s by a conservative faction led by Vincent d'Indy.[85] Ravel, together with several other former pupils of Fauré, set up a new, modernist organisation, the Société Musicale Indépendente, with Fauré as its president.[n 16] The new society's inaugural concert took place on 20 April 1910; the seven items on the programme included premieres of Fauré's song cycle La chanson d'Ève, Debussy's piano suite D'un cahier d'esquisses, Zoltán Kodály's Six pièces pour piano, and the original piano duet version of Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye. The performers included Fauré, Florent Schmitt, Ernest Bloch, Pierre Monteux and, in the Debussy work, Ravel.[87] Kelly considers it a sign of Ravel's new influence that the society featured Satie's music in a concert in January 1911.[14]
The first of Ravel's two operas, the one-act comedy L'heure espagnole[n 17] was premiered in 1911. The work had been completed in 1907, but the manager of the Opéra-Comique, Albert Carré, repeatedly deferred its presentation. He was concerned that its plot – a bedroom farce – would be badly received by the ultra-respectable mothers and daughters who were an important part of the Opéra-Comique's audience.[88] The piece was only modestly successful at its first production, and it was not until the 1920s that it became popular.[89]
In 1912 Ravel had three ballets premiered. The first, to the orchestrated and expanded version of Ma mère l'Oye, opened at the Théâtre des Arts in January.[90] The reviews were excellent: the Mercure de France called the score "absolutely ravishing, a masterwork in miniature".[91] The music rapidly entered the concert repertoire; it was played at the Queen's Hall, London, within weeks of the Paris premiere, and was repeated at the Proms later in the same year. The Times praised "the enchantment of the work ... the effect of mirage, by which something quite real seems to float on nothing."[92] New York audiences heard the work in the same year.[93] Ravel's second ballet of 1912 was Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs, danced to the score of Valses nobles et sentimentales, which opened at the Châtelet in April. Daphnis et Chloé opened at the same theatre in June. This was his largest-scale orchestral work, and took him immense trouble and several years to complete.[94]
Daphnis et Chloé was commissioned in or about 1909 by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his company, the Ballets Russes.[n 18] Ravel began work with Diaghilev's choreographer, Michel Fokine, and designer, Léon Bakst.[96] Fokine had a reputation for his modern approach to dance, with individual numbers replaced by continuous music. This appealed to Ravel, and after discussing the action in great detail with Fokine, Ravel began composing the music.[97] There were frequent disagreements between the collaborators, and the premiere was under-rehearsed because of the late completion of the work.[98] It had an unenthusiastic reception and was quickly withdrawn, although it was revived successfully a year later in Monte Carlo and London.[99] The effort to complete the ballet took its toll on Ravel's health;[n 19] neurasthenia obliged him to rest for several months after the premiere.[101]
Ravel composed little during 1913. He collaborated with Stravinsky on a performing version of Mussorgsky's unfinished opera Khovanshchina, and his own works were the Trois poèmes de Mallarmé for soprano and chamber ensemble, and two short piano pieces, À la manière de Borodine and À la manière de Chabrier.[19] In 1913, together with Debussy, Ravel was among the musicians present at the dress rehearsal of The Rite of Spring.[102] Stravinsky later said that Ravel was the only person who immediately understood the music.[103] Ravel predicted that the premiere of the Rite would be seen as an event of historic importance equal to that of Pelléas et Mélisande.[104][n 20]
When Germany invaded France in 1914, Ravel tried to join the French Air Force. He considered his small stature and light weight ideal for an aviator, but was rejected because of his age and a minor heart complaint.[106] After several unsuccessful attempts to enlist, Ravel finally joined the Thirteenth Artillery Regiment as a lorry driver in March 1915, when he was forty.[107] Stravinsky expressed admiration for his friend's courage: "at his age and with his name he could have had an easier place, or done nothing".[108] Some of Ravel's duties put him in mortal danger, driving munitions at night under heavy German bombardment. At the same time his peace of mind was undermined by his mother's failing health. His own health also deteriorated; he suffered from insomnia and digestive problems, underwent a bowel operation following amoebic dysentery in September 1916, and had frostbite in his feet the following winter.[109]
During the war, the Ligue Nationale pour la Defense de la Musique Française was formed by Saint-Saëns, Dubois, d'Indy and others, campaigning for a ban on the performance of contemporary German music.[110] Ravel declined to join, telling the committee of the league in 1916, "It would be dangerous for French composers to ignore systematically the productions of their foreign colleagues, and thus form themselves into a sort of national coterie: our musical art, which is so rich at the present time, would soon degenerate, becoming isolated in banal formulas."[111] The league responded by banning Ravel's music from its concerts.[112]
Ravel's mother died in January 1917, and he fell into a "horrible despair", compounding the distress he felt at the suffering endured by the people of his country during the war.[113] He composed few works in the war years. The Piano Trio was almost complete when the conflict began, and the most substantial of his wartime works is Le tombeau de Couperin, composed between 1914 and 1917. The suite celebrates the tradition of François Couperin, the 18th-century French composer; each movement is dedicated to a friend of Ravel's who died in the war.[114]
After the war, those close to Ravel recognised that he had lost much of his physical and mental stamina. As the musicologist Stephen Zank puts it, "Ravel's emotional equilibrium, so hard won in the previous decade, had been seriously compromised".[115] His output, never large, became smaller.[115] Nonetheless, after the death of Debussy in 1918, he was generally seen, in France and abroad, as the leading French composer of the era.[116] Fauré wrote to him, "I am happier than you can imagine about the solid position which you occupy and which you have acquired so brilliantly and so rapidly. It is a source of joy and pride for your old professor."[116] Ravel was offered the Legion of Honour in 1920,[n 21] and although he declined the decoration, he was viewed by the new generation of composers typified by Satie's protégés Les Six as an establishment figure. Satie had turned against him, and commented, "Ravel refuses the Légion d'honneur, but all his music accepts it."[119][n 22] Despite this attack, Ravel continued to admire Satie's early music, and always acknowledged the older man's influence on his own development.[52] Ravel took a benign view of Les Six, promoting their music, and defending it against journalistic attacks. He regarded their reaction against his works as natural, and preferable to their copying his style.[123] Through the Société Musicale Indépendente, he was able to encourage them and composers from other countries. The Société presented concerts of recent works by American composers including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and George Antheil and by Vaughan Williams and his English colleagues Arnold Bax and Cyril Scott.[124]
Orenstein and Zank both comment that, although Ravel's post-war output was small, averaging only one composition a year, it included some of his finest works.[125] In 1920 he completed La valse, in response to a commission from Diaghilev. He had worked on it intermittently for some years, planning a concert piece, "a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, mingled with, in my mind, the impression of a fantastic, fatal whirling".[126] It was rejected by Diaghilev, who said, "It's a masterpiece, but it's not a ballet. It's the portrait of a ballet".[127] Ravel heard Diaghilev's verdict without protest or argument, left, and had no further dealings with him.[128][n 23] Nichols comments that Ravel had the satisfaction of seeing the ballet staged twice by other managements before Diaghilev died.[131] A ballet danced to the orchestral version of Le tombeau de Couperin was given at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in November 1920, and the premiere of La valse followed in December.[132] The following year Daphnis et Chloé and L'heure espagnole were successfully revived at the Paris Opéra.[132]
In the post-war era there was a reaction against the large-scale music of composers such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.[133] Stravinsky, whose Rite of Spring was written for a huge orchestra, began to work on a much smaller scale. His 1923 ballet score Les noces is composed for voices and twenty-one instruments.[134] Ravel did not like the work (his opinion caused a cooling in Stravinsky's friendship with him)[135] but he was in sympathy with the fashion for "dépouillement" – the "stripping away" of pre-war extravagance to reveal the essentials.[123] Many of his works from the 1920s are noticeably sparer in texture than earlier pieces.[136] Other influences on him in this period were jazz and atonality. Jazz was popular in Parisian cafés, and French composers such as Darius Milhaud incorporated elements of it in their work.[137] Ravel commented that he preferred jazz to grand opera,[138] and its influence is heard in his later music.[139] Arnold Schönberg's abandonment of conventional tonality also had echoes in some of Ravel's music such as the Chansons madécasses[n 24] (1926), which Ravel doubted he could have written without the example of Pierrot Lunaire.[140] His other major works from the 1920s include the orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (1922), the opera L'enfant et les sortilèges[n 25] to a libretto by Colette (1926), Tzigane (1924) and the Violin Sonata (1927).[132]
Finding city life fatiguing, Ravel moved to the countryside.[141] In May 1921 he took up residence at Le Belvédère, a small house on the fringe of Montfort-l'Amaury, 88 kilometres (55 mi) west of Paris, in the Yvelines département. Looked after by a devoted housekeeper, Mme Revelot, he lived there for the rest of his life.[142] At Le Belvédère Ravel composed and gardened, when not performing in Paris or abroad. His touring schedule increased considerably in the 1920s, with concerts in Britain, Sweden, Denmark, the US, Canada, Spain, Austria and Italy.[132]
Arbie Orenstein[143]
After two months of planning, Ravel made a four-month tour of North America in 1928, playing and conducting. His fee was a guaranteed minimum of $10,000 and a constant supply of Gauloises cigarettes.[144] He appeared with most of the leading orchestras in Canada and the US and visited twenty-five cities.[145] Audiences were enthusiastic and the critics were complimentary.[n 26] At an all-Ravel programme conducted by Serge Koussevitzky in New York, the entire audience stood up and applauded as the composer took his seat. Ravel was touched by this spontaneous gesture and observed, "You know, this doesn't happen to me in Paris."[143] Orenstein, commenting that this tour marked the zenith of Ravel's international reputation, lists its non-musical highlights as a visit to Poe's house in New York, and excursions to Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon.[143] Ravel was unmoved by his new international celebrity. He commented that the critics' recent enthusiasm was of no more importance than their earlier judgment, when they called him "the most perfect example of insensitivity and lack of emotion".[147]
The last composition Ravel completed in the 1920s, Boléro, became his most famous. He was commissioned to provide a score for Ida Rubinstein's ballet company, and having been unable to secure the rights to orchestrate Albéniz's Iberia, he decided on "an experiment in a very special and limited direction ... a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral tissue without music."[148] Ravel continued that the work was "one long, very gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and there is practically no invention except the plan and the manner of the execution. The themes are altogether impersonal".[148] He was astonished, and not wholly pleased, that it became a mass success. When one elderly member of the audience at the Opéra shouted "Rubbish!" at the premiere, he remarked, "That old lady got the message!"[149] The work was popularised by the conductor Arturo Toscanini,[150] and has been recorded several hundred times.[n 27] Ravel commented to Arthur Honegger, one of Les Six, "I've written only one masterpiece – Boléro. Unfortunately there's no music in it."[152]
At the beginning of the 1930s, Ravel was working on two piano concertos. He completed the Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand first. It was commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during the war. Ravel was stimulated by the technical challenges of the project: "In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands."[153] Ravel, not proficient enough to perform the work with only his left hand, demonstrated it with both hands.[n 28] Wittgenstein was initially disappointed by the piece, but after long study he became fascinated by it and ranked it as a great work.[155] In January 1932 he premiered it in Vienna to instant acclaim, and performed it in Paris with Ravel conducting the following year.[156] The critic Henry Prunières wrote, "From the opening measures, we are plunged into a world in which Ravel has but rarely introduced us."[147]
The Piano Concerto in G major was completed a year later. After the premiere in January 1932 there was high praise for the soloist, Marguerite Long, and for Ravel's score, though not for his conducting.[157] Long, the dedicatee, played the concerto in more than twenty European cities, with the composer conducting;[158] they planned to record it together, but at the sessions Ravel confined himself to supervising proceedings and Pedro de Freitas Branco conducted.[159]
Igor Stravinsky[160]
In October 1932, Ravel suffered a blow to the head in a taxi accident. The injury was not thought serious at the time, but in a study for the British Medical Journal in 1988 the neurologist R. A. Henson concludes that it may have exacerbated an existing cerebral condition.[161] As early as 1927 close friends had been concerned at Ravel's growing absent-mindedness, and within a year of the accident he started to experience symptoms suggesting aphasia.[162] Before the accident he had begun work on music for a film, Don Quixote (1933), but he was unable to meet the production schedule, and Jacques Ibert wrote most of the score.[163] Ravel completed three songs for baritone and orchestra intended for the film; they were published as Don Quichotte à Dulcinée. The manuscript orchestral score is in Ravel's hand, but Lucien Garban and Manuel Rosenthal helped in transcription. Ravel composed no more after this.[161] The exact nature of his illness is unknown. Experts have ruled out the possibility of a tumour, and have variously suggested frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.[164][n 29] Though no longer able to write music or perform, Ravel remained physically and socially active until his last months. Henson notes that Ravel preserved most or all his auditory imagery and could still hear music in his head.[161]
In 1937, Ravel began to suffer pain from his condition, and was examined by Clovis Vincent, a well-known Paris neurosurgeon. Vincent advised surgical treatment. He thought a tumour unlikely, and expected to find ventricular dilatation that surgery might prevent from progressing. Ravel's brother Edouard accepted this advice; as Henson comments, the patient was in no state to express a considered view. After the operation there seemed to be an improvement in his condition, but it was short-lived, and he soon lapsed into a coma. He died on 28 December, at the age of 62.[167]
On 30 December 1937, Ravel was buried next to his parents in a granite tomb at the cemetery at Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris. Ravel was an atheist and there was no religious ceremony.[168]
Marcel Marnat's catalogue of Ravel's complete works lists eighty-five works, including many incomplete or abandoned.[169] Though that total is small in comparison with the output of his major contemporaries,[n 30] it is nevertheless inflated by Ravel's frequent practice of writing works for piano and later rewriting them as independent pieces for orchestra.[71] The performable body of works numbers about sixty; slightly more than half are instrumental. Ravel's music includes pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concerti, ballet music, opera, and song cycles. He wrote no symphonies or church works.[169]
Ravel drew on many generations of French composers from Couperin and Rameau to Fauré and the more recent innovations of Satie and Debussy. Foreign influences include Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Chopin.[171] He considered himself in many ways a classicist, often using traditional structures and forms, such as the ternary, to present his new melodic and rhythmic content and innovative harmonies.[172] The influence of jazz on his later music is heard within conventional classical structures in the Piano Concerto and the Violin Sonata.[173]
Ravel to Vaughan Williams[174]
Ravel placed high importance on melody, telling Vaughan Williams that there is "an implied melodic outline in all vital music".[175] His themes are frequently modal instead of using the familiar major or minor scales.[176] As a result, there are few leading notes in his output.[177] Chords of the ninth and eleventh and unresolved appoggiaturas, such as those in the Valses nobles et sentimentales, are characteristic of Ravel's harmonic language.[178]
Dance forms appealed to Ravel, most famously the bolero and pavane, but also the minuet, forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera and passacaglia. National and regional consciousness was important to him, and although a planned concerto on Basque themes never materialised, his works include allusions to Hebraic, Greek, Hungarian and gypsy themes.[179] He wrote several short pieces paying tribute to composers he admired – Borodin, Chabrier, Fauré and Haydn, interpreting their characteristics in a Ravellian style.[180] Another important influence was literary rather than musical: Ravel said that he learnt from Poe that "true art is a perfect balance between pure intellect and emotion",[181] with the corollary that a piece of music should be a perfectly balanced entity with no irrelevant material allowed to intrude.[182]
Ravel completed two operas, and worked on three others. The unrealised three were Olympia, La cloche engloutie and Jeanne d'Arc. Olympia was to be based on Hoffmann's The Sandman; he made sketches for it in 1898–99, but did not progress far. La cloche engloutie after Hauptmann's The Sunken Bell occupied him intermittently from 1906 to 1912, Ravel destroyed the sketches for both these works, except for a "Symphonie horlogère" which he incorporated into the opening of L'heure espagnole.[183] The third unrealised project was an operatic version of Joseph Delteil's 1925 novel about Joan of Arc. It was to be a large-scale, full-length work for the Paris Opéra, but Ravel's final illness prevented him from writing it.[184]
Ravel's first completed opera was L'heure espagnole (premiered in 1911), described as a "comédie musicale".[185] It is among the works set in or illustrating Spain that Ravel wrote throughout his career. Nichols comments that the essential Spanish colouring gave Ravel a reason for virtuoso use of the modern orchestra, which the composer considered "perfectly designed for underlining and exaggerating comic effects".[186] Edward Burlingame Hill found Ravel's vocal writing particularly skilful in the work, "giving the singers something besides recitative without hampering the action", and "commenting orchestrally upon the dramatic situations and the sentiments of the actors without diverting attention from the stage."[187] Some find the characters artificial and the piece lacking in humanity.[185] The critic David Murray writes that the score "glows with the famous Ravel tendresse".[188]
The second opera, also in one act, is L'enfant et les sortilèges (1926), a "fantaisie lyrique" to a libretto by Colette. She and Ravel had planned the story as a ballet, but at the composer's suggestion Colette turned it into an opera libretto. It is more uncompromisingly modern in its musical style than L'heure espagnole, and the jazz elements and bitonality of much of the work upset many Parisian opera-goers. Ravel was once again accused of artificiality and lack of human emotion, but Nichols finds "profoundly serious feeling at the heart of this vivid and entertaining work".[189] The score presents an impression of simplicity, disguising intricate links between themes, with, in Murray's phrase, "extraordinary and bewitching sounds from the orchestra pit throughout".[190]
Although one-act operas are generally staged less often than full-length ones,[191] Ravel's are produced regularly in France and abroad.[192]
A substantial proportion of Ravel's output was vocal. His early works in that sphere include cantatas written for his unsuccessful attempts at the Prix de Rome. His other vocal music from that period shows Debussy's influence, in what Kelly describes as "a static, recitative-like vocal style", prominent piano parts and rhythmic flexibility.[14] By 1906 Ravel was taking even further than Debussy the natural, sometimes colloquial, setting of the French language in Histoires naturelles. The same technique is highlighted in Trois poèmes de Mallarmé (1913); Debussy set two of the three poems at the same time as Ravel, and the former's word-setting is noticeably more formal than the latter's, in which syllables are often elided. In the cycles Shéhérazade and Chansons madécasses, Ravel gives vent to his taste for the exotic, even the sensual, in both the vocal line and the accompaniment.[14][193]
Ravel's songs often draw on vernacular styles, using elements of many folk traditions in such works as Cinq mélodies populaires grecques, Deux mélodies hébraïques and Chants populaires.[194] Among the poets on whose lyrics he drew were Marot, Léon-Paul Fargue, Leconte de Lisle and Verlaine. For three songs dating from 1914–15, he wrote his own texts.[195]
Although Ravel wrote for mixed choirs and male solo voices, he is chiefly associated, in his songs, with the soprano and mezzo-soprano voices. Even when setting lyrics clearly narrated by a man, he often favoured a female voice,[196] and he seems to have preferred his best-known cycle, Shéhérazade, to be sung by a woman, although a tenor voice is a permitted alternative in the score.[197]
During his lifetime it was above all as a master of orchestration that Ravel was famous.[198] He minutely studied the ability of each orchestral instrument to determine its potential, putting its individual colour and timbre to maximum use.[199] The critic Alexis Roland-Manuel wrote, "In reality he is, with Stravinsky, the one man in the world who best knows the weight of a trombone-note, the harmonics of a 'cello or a pp tam-tam in the relationships of one orchestral group to another."[200]
For all Ravel's orchestral mastery, only four of his works were conceived as concert works for symphony orchestra: Rapsodie espagnole, La valse and the two concertos. All the other orchestral works were written either for the stage, as in Daphnis et Chloé, or as a reworking of piano pieces, Alborada del gracioso and Une barque sur l'ocean, (Miroirs), Valses nobles et sentimentales, Ma mère l'Oye, Tzigane (originally for violin and piano) and Le tombeau de Couperin.[201] In the orchestral versions, the instrumentation generally clarifies the harmonic language of the score and brings sharpness to classical dance rhythms.[202] Occasionally, as in the Alborada del gracioso, critics have found the later orchestral version less persuasive than the sharp-edged piano original.[203]
In some of his scores from the 1920s, including Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel frequently divides his upper strings, having them play in six to eight parts while the woodwind are required to play with extreme agility. His writing for the brass ranges from softly muted to triple-forte outbursts at climactic points.[204] In the 1930s he tended to simplify his orchestral textures. The lighter tone of the G major Piano Concerto follows the models of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, alongside use of jazz-like themes.[205] The critics Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor comment that in the slow movement, "one of the most beautiful tunes Ravel ever invented", the composer "can truly be said to join hands with Mozart".[206] The most popular of Ravel's orchestral works, Boléro (1928), was conceived several years before its completion; in 1924 he said that he was contemplating "a symphonic poem without a subject, where the whole interest will be in the rhythm".[207]
Ravel made orchestral versions of piano works by Schumann, Chabrier, Debussy and Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Orchestral versions of the last by Mikhail Tushmalov, Sir Henry Wood and Leo Funtek predated Ravel's 1922 version, and many more have been made since, but Ravel's remains the best known.[208] Kelly remarks on its "dazzling array of instrumental colour",[14] and a contemporary reviewer commented on how, in dealing with another composer's music, Ravel had produced an orchestral sound wholly unlike his own.[209]
Although Ravel wrote fewer than thirty works for the piano, they exemplify his range; Orenstein remarks that the composer keeps his personal touch "from the striking simplicity of Ma mère l'Oye to the transcendental virtuosity of Gaspard de la nuit."[210] Ravel's earliest major work for piano, Jeux d'eau (1901), is frequently cited as evidence that he evolved his style independently of Debussy, whose major works for piano all came later.[211] When writing for solo piano, Ravel rarely aimed at the intimate chamber effect characteristic of Debussy, but sought a Lisztian virtuosity.[212] The authors of The Record Guide consider that works such as Gaspard de la Nuit and Miroirs have a beauty and originality with a deeper inspiration "in the harmonic and melodic genius of Ravel himself."[212]
Pavane pour une infante défunte
Performed by Thérèse Dussaut. | |
Problems playing this file? See media help. |
Most of Ravel's piano music is extremely difficult to play, and presents pianists with a balance of technical and artistic challenges.[213][n 31] Writing of the piano music the critic Andrew Clark commented in 2013, "A successful Ravel interpretation is a finely balanced thing. It involves subtle musicianship, a feeling for pianistic colour and the sort of lightly worn virtuosity that masks the advanced technical challenges he makes in Alborada del gracioso ... and the two outer movements of Gaspard de la nuit. Too much temperament, and the music loses its classical shape; too little, and it sounds pale."[215] This balance caused a breach between the composer and Viñes, who said that if he observed the nuances and speeds Ravel stipulated in Gaspard de la nuit, "Le gibet" would "bore the audience to death".[216] Some pianists continue to attract criticism for over-interpreting Ravel's piano writing.[217][n 32]
Ravel's regard for his predecessors is heard in several of his piano works; Menuet sur le nom de Haydn (1909), À la manière de Borodine (1912), À la manière de Chabrier (1913) and Le tombeau de Couperin all incorporate elements of the named composers interpreted in a characteristically Ravellian manner.[219] Clark comments that those piano works which Ravel later orchestrated are overshadowed by the revised versions: "Listen to Le tombeau de Couperin and the complete ballet music for Ma mère L'Oye in the classic recordings conducted by André Cluytens, and the piano versions never sound quite the same again."[215]
Apart from a one-movement sonata for violin and piano dating from 1899, unpublished in the composer's lifetime, Ravel wrote seven chamber works.[14] The earliest is the String Quartet (1902–03), dedicated to Fauré, and showing the influence of Debussy's quartet of ten years earlier. Like the Debussy, it differs from the more monumental quartets of the established French school of Franck and his followers, with more succinct melodies, fluently interchanged, in flexible tempos and varieties of instrumental colour.[220] The Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet, and string quartet (1905) was composed very quickly by Ravel's standards. It is an ethereal piece in the vein of the Pavane pour une infante défunte.[221] Ravel also worked at unusual speed on the Piano Trio (1914) to complete it before joining the French Army. It contains Basque, Baroque and far Eastern influences, and shows Ravel's growing technical skill, dealing with the difficulties of balancing the percussive piano with the sustained sound of the violin and cello, "blending the two disparate elements in a musical language that is unmistakably his own," in the words of the commentator Keith Anderson.[222]
Ravel's four chamber works composed after the First World War are the Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920–22), the "Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré" for violin and piano (1922), the chamber original of Tzigane for violin and piano (1924) and finally the Violin Sonata (1923–27).[14] The two middle works are respectively an affectionate tribute to Ravel's teacher,[223] and a virtuoso display piece for the violinist Jelly d'Arányi.[224] The Violin and Cello Sonata is a departure from the rich textures and harmonies of the pre-war Piano Trio: the composer said that it marked a turning point in his career, with thinness of texture pushed to the extreme and harmonic charm renounced in favour of pure melody.[225] His last chamber work, the Violin Sonata (sometimes called the Second after the posthumous publication of his student sonata), is a frequently dissonant work. Ravel said that the violin and piano are "essentially incompatible" instruments, and that his Sonata reveals their incompatibility.[225] Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor consider the post-war sonatas "rather laboured and unsatisfactory",[226] and neither work has matched the popularity of Ravel's pre-war chamber works.[227]
Ravel's interpretations of some of his piano works were captured on piano roll between 1914 and 1928, although some rolls supposedly played by him may have been made under his supervision by Robert Casadesus, a better pianist.[228] Transfers of the rolls have been released on compact disc.[228] In 1913 there was a gramophone recording of Jeux d'eau played by Mark Hambourg, and by the early 1920s there were discs featuring the Pavane pour une infante défunte and Ondine, and movements from the String Quartet, Le tombeau de Couperin and Ma mère l'Oye.[229] Ravel was among the first composers who recognised the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public,[n 33] and throughout the 1920s there was a steady stream of recordings of his works, some of which featured the composer as pianist or conductor.[231] A 1932 recording of the G major Piano Concerto was advertised as "Conducted by the composer",[232] although he had in fact supervised the sessions while a more proficient conductor took the baton.[233] Recordings for which Ravel actually was the conductor included a Boléro in 1930, and a sound film of a 1933 performance of the D major concerto with Wittgenstein as soloist.[234]
Ravel declined not only the Légion d'honneur, but all state honours from France, refusing to let his name go forward for election to the Institut de France.[235] He accepted foreign awards, including honorary membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1921,[236] the Belgian Ordre de Léopold in 1926, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1928.[237]
After Ravel's death, his brother and legatee, Edouard, turned the composer's house at Montfort-l'Amaury into a museum, leaving it substantially as Ravel had known it. As of 2018[update] the maison-musée de Maurice Ravel remains open for guided tours.[238]
In his later years, Edouard Ravel declared his intention to leave the bulk of the composer's estate to the city of Paris for the endowment of a Nobel Prize in music, but evidently changed his mind.[239] After his death in 1960, the estate passed through several hands. Despite the substantial royalties paid for performing Ravel's music, the news magazine Le Point reported in 2000 that it was unclear who the beneficiaries were.[240] The British newspaper The Guardian reported in 2001 that no money from royalties had been forthcoming for the maintenance of the Ravel museum at Montfort-l'Amaury, which was in a poor state of repair.[239]
Maurice Ravel | |
---|---|
Stage |
|
Orchestral |
|
Concertante |
|
Chamber |
|
Solo piano |
|
Vocal |
|
Related articles |
|
List of compositions by Maurice Ravel
Category:Compositions by Maurice Ravel |
Authority control |
wiki en[Wiki en表示]This article is about the late 19th – early 20th-century composer. For other uses, see Ravel (disambiguation).
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer known especially for his melodies, masterful orchestration, richly evocative harmonies and inventive instrumental textures and effects. Along with Claude Debussy, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music is part of the standard concert repertoire. Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his mastery of orchestration is particularly evident in such works as Rapsodie espagnole, Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel is best known for his orchestral work Boléro (1928), which he once described as "a piece for orchestra without music".[1] According to SACEM, as recently as 2009 Ravel has been on the list of the top 20 artists whose works have generated the most royalties abroad.[2] Contents
BiographyEarly lifeRavel was born in 1875, in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, 18 kilometres (11 mi) from the Spanish border. His mother, Marie Delouart, was Basque – according to Ravel's biographer, Roger Nichols, "illegitimate" and "practically illiterate"[3] – and had grown up in Madrid, Spain, while his father, Joseph Ravel, was an educated and successful engineer, a Swiss inventor and industrialist from French Haute-Savoie.[4] Both were Catholics and they provided a happy and stimulating household for their children. Some of Joseph's inventions were quite important, including an early internal combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death", an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a success until a fatal accident at the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1903.[5] Joseph delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, and he also had a keen interest in music and culture.[6] Ravel substantiated his father's early influence by stating later, “As a child, I was sensitive to music—to every kind of music.”[7] Ravel was very fond of his mother, and her Basque-Spanish heritage was a strong influence on his life and music. Among his earliest memories are folk songs she sang to him.[8] The family moved to Paris three months after the birth of Maurice, and there his younger brother Édouard was born in 1878. Édouard became his father’s favorite and also became an engineer.[8] At age six, Maurice began piano lessons with Henry Ghys and received his first instruction in harmony, counterpoint, and composition with Charles-René. His earliest public piano recital was in 1889 at age fourteen.[9] Though obviously talented at the piano, Ravel demonstrated a preference for composing. He was particularly impressed by the new Russian works conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Exposition Universelle in 1889.[10][11] The foreign music at the exhibition also had a great influence on Ravel's contemporaries Erik Satie, Emmanuel Chabrier, and most significantly Claude Debussy. Two years earlier Ravel had met Ricardo Viñes, who would become one of his best friends, one of the foremost interpreters of his piano music, and an important link between Ravel and Spanish music.[12] The students shared an appreciation for Richard Wagner, the Russian school, and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé.[13] Paris Conservatoire and early careerRavel’s parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. His teachers included Émile Decombes. He received a first prize in the piano student competition in 1891.[14] Overall, however, he was not successful academically even as his musicianship matured dramatically. Considered "very gifted", Ravel was also called "somewhat heedless" in his studies.[14] Around 1893, Ravel created his earliest compositions, and he was introduced by his father to the café pianist Erik Satie, whose distinctive personality and unorthodox musical experiments proved influential.[13] Ravel was not a "bohemian" and evidenced little of the typical trauma of adolescence. At twenty years of age, Ravel was already "self-possessed, a little aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter."[15] He dressed like a dandy and was meticulous about his appearance and demeanor. Short in stature, light in frame, and bony in features, Ravel had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey".[16] His large head seemed suitably matched to his great intellect. He was well-read and later accumulated a library of over 1,000 volumes.[16] In his younger adulthood, Ravel was usually bearded in the fashion of the day, though later he dispensed with all whiskers. Though reserved, Ravel was sensitive and self-critical, and had a mischievous sense of humor.[15] He became a lifelong tobacco smoker in his youth, and he enjoyed strongly flavored meals, fine wine, and spirited conversation.[17] After failing to meet the requirement of earning a competitive medal in three consecutive years, Ravel was expelled in 1895. He turned down a music professorship in Tunisia then returned to the Conservatoire in 1898 and started his studies with Gabriel Fauré, determined to focus on composing rather than piano playing.[18] He studied composition with Fauré until he was dismissed from the class in 1900 for having won neither the fugue nor the composition prize. He remained an auditor with Fauré until he left the Conservatoire in 1903.[19] Ravel found his teacher’s personality and methods sympathetic and they remained friends and colleagues. He also undertook private studies with André Gedalge, whom he later stated was responsible for "the most valuable elements of my technique."[20] Ravel studied the ability of each instrument carefully in order to determine the possible effects, and was sensitive to their color and timbre. This may account for his success as an orchestrator and as a transcriber of his own piano works and those of other composers, such as Mussorgsky, Debussy and Schumann.[21] His first significant work, Habanera for two pianos, was later transcribed into the well-known third movement of his Rapsodie espagnole, which he dedicated to Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, another of his professors at the Conservatoire. His first published work was Menuet antique, dedicated to and premiered by Viñes.[22] In 1899, Ravel conducted his first orchestral piece, Shéhérazade, ouverture de féerie, and was greeted by a raucous mixture of boos and applause. Critics termed the piece "a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian School" and called Ravel a "mediocrely gifted debutante ... who will perhaps become something if not someone in about ten years, if he works hard."[23] As the most gifted composer of his class and as a leader, with Debussy, of avant-garde French music, Ravel would continue to have a difficult time with the critics for some time to come.[24]
Around 1900, Ravel joined with a number of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians who were referred to as the Apaches (hooligans), a name coined by Viñes to represent his band of "artistic outcasts".[25] The group met regularly until the beginning of World War I and the members often inspired each other with intellectual argument and performances of their works before the group. For a time, the influential group included Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla.[26] One of the first works Ravel performed for the Apaches was Jeux d'eau, his first piano masterpiece and clearly a pathfinding impressionistic work. Viñes performed the public premiere of this piece and Ravel's other early masterpiece Pavane pour une infante défunte in 1902.[27] During his years at the Conservatoire, Ravel tried numerous times to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, but to no avail; he was probably considered too radical by the conservatives, including Director Théodore Dubois.[28] Ravel's String Quartet in F, probably modeled on Debussy’s Quartet (1893), is now a standard work of chamber music, though at the time it was criticized and found lacking academically.[29] In 1905, Ravel's final year of eligibility for the Prix de Rome, Ravel did not even pass the preliminary test, despite being favored to win one of the two first prizes available.[30] Instead, all six selected finalists were students of Charles Lenepveu, a member of the jury and heir apparent of Dubois as director of the Conservatoire. The scandal – named the "Ravel Affair" by the Parisian press – engaged the entire artistic community, pitting conservatives against the avant-garde, and eventually caused the resignation of Dubois and his replacement by Fauré instead of Lenepveu, a vindication of sorts for Ravel.[31] Alfred Edwards, editor of Le Matin, who had taken particular interest in the incident, took Ravel on a seven-week canal trip on his yacht Aimée through the Low Countries in June and July 1905, the first time Ravel traveled abroad.[32] Though deprived of the opportunity to study in Rome, the decade after the scandal proved to be Ravel's most productive, and included his "Spanish period".[33] Ravel and DebussyRavel met Debussy in the 1890s. Debussy was older than Ravel by twelve years and his pioneering Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was influential among the younger musicians including Ravel, who were impressed by the new language of impressionism.[34] In 1900, Ravel was invited to Debussy’s home and they played each other’s works. Viñes became the preferred piano performer for both composers and a go-between. The two composers attended many of the same musical events and were performed at the same concerts. Ravel and the Apaches were strong supporters of Debussy’s controversial public debut of his unconventional opera Pelléas et Mélisande, which garnered Debussy both fame and scorn.[28] The two musicians also appreciated much the same musical heritage and operated in the same artistic milieu, but they differed in terms of personality and their approach to music. Debussy was considered more spontaneous and casual in his composing while Ravel was more attentive to form and craftsmanship.[35] Even though they worked independently of one another, because they employed differing means to similar ends, and because superficial similarities and even some more substantive ones are evident, the public and the critics associated them more than the facts warranted.[36] Ravel wrote that Debussy's "genius was obviously one of great individuality, creating its own laws, constantly in evolution, expressing itself freely, yet always faithful to French tradition. For Debussy, the musician and the man, I have had profound admiration, but by nature I am different from Debussy."[37] Ravel further stated, "I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy."[18] They admired each other's music and Ravel even played Debussy's work in public on occasion. However, Ravel did criticize Debussy sometimes, particularly regarding his orchestration, and he once said, "If I had the time, I would reorchestrate La mer."[35] By 1905, factions formed for each composer and the two groups began feuding in public. Disputes arose as to questions of chronology about their respective works and who influenced whom. The public tension caused personal estrangement.[38] As Ravel said, "It is probably better after all for us to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons."[36] Ravel stoically absorbed superficial comparisons with Debussy promulgated by biased critics, including Pierre Lalo, an anti-Ravel critic who stated, "Where M. Debussy is all sensitivity, M. Ravel is all insensitivity, borrowing without hesitation not only technique but the sensitivity of other people."[38] During 1913, in a remarkable coincidence, both Ravel and Debussy independently produced and published musical settings for poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, again provoking comparisons of their work and their perceived influence on each other, which continued even after Debussy’s death five years later.[39] Early major worksThe next of Ravel’s piano compositions to become famous was Miroirs (Mirrors, 1905), five piano pieces which marked a "harmonic evolution" and which one commentator described as "intensely descriptive and pictorial. They banish all sentiment in expression but offer to the listener a number of refined sensory elements which can be appreciated according to his imagination."[40] Next was his Histoires naturelles (Nature Stories), five humorous songs evoking the presence of five animals.[41] Two years later, Ravel completed his Rapsodie espagnole, his first major "Spanish" piece, written first for piano four hands and then scored for orchestra. Though it employs folk-like melodies, no actual folk songs are quoted.[42] It premiered in 1908 to generally good reviews, with one critic stating that it was "one of the most interesting novelties of the season", while Pierre Lalo (as usual) reacted negatively, calling it "laborious and pedantic".[43] Next followed Ravel's music for the opera L'heure espagnole (The Spanish Hour), full of humor and rich in color, employing a wide variety of instruments and their characteristic qualities, including the trombone, sarrusophone, tuba, celesta, xylophone, and bells.[44] The libretto was by Franc-Nohain, after his own comedy of the same name. Ravel further extended his mastery of impressionistic piano music with Gaspard de la nuit, based on a collection of the same name by Aloysius Bertrand, with some influence from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, particularly in the second part.[45] Viñes, as usual, performed the premiere but his performance displeased Ravel, and their relationship became strained from then on. For future premieres, Ravel replaced Viñes with Marguerite Long.[46] Also unhappy with the conservative musical establishment which was discouraging performance of new music, around this time Ravel, Fauré and some of his pupils formed the Société musicale indépendante (SMI). In 1910, the society presented the premiere of Ravel's Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose) in its original piano duet version.[47] With this work, Ravel followed in the tradition of Schumann, Mussorgsky, and Debussy, who also created memorable works of childhood themes. In 1912, Ravel's Ma mère l'oye was performed as a ballet (with added music) after being first transcribed from piano to orchestra.[48] Looking to expand his contacts and career, Ravel made his first foreign tours to England and Scotland during 1909 and 1911.[49] Daphnis et ChloéRavel began work with impresario Sergei Diaghilev during 1909 for the ballet Daphnis et Chloé commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the famous ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev had taken Paris by storm the previous year in his Parisian opera debut, Boris Godunov.[48] Daphnis et Chloé took three years to complete, with conflicts constantly arising among the principal artists, including Léon Bakst (sets and costumes), Michel Fokine (libretto), and Ravel (music).[50] In frustration, Diaghilev nearly cancelled the project. The ballet had an unenthusiastic reception and lasted only two performances, only to be revived to acclaim a year later. Igor Stravinsky called Daphnis et Chloé "one of the most beautiful products of all French music" and author Burnett James claims that it is "Ravel's most impressive single achievement, as it is his most opulent and confident orchestral score".[51] The work is notable for its rhythmic diversity, lyricism, and evocations of nature. The score utilizes a large orchestra and two choruses, one onstage and one offstage.[52] So exhausting was the effort to score the ballet that Ravel's health deteriorated, with a diagnosis of neurasthenia soon forcing him to rest for several months.[53] During 1914, just as World War I began, Ravel composed his Piano Trio (for piano, violin, and cello) with its Basque themes. The piece, difficult to play well, is considered a masterpiece among trio works.[54] War yearsAlthough he considered his small stature of 1.61 metres (5 ft 3 in)[55] and light weight an advantage to becoming an aviator, and he tried every means of securing service as a flyer, during the First World War Ravel was not allowed to enlist as a pilot because of his age and weak health.[56] Instead, he became a truck driver stationed at the Verdun front.[57] With his mother's death in 1917, his fondest relationship ended and he fell into a "horrible despair", adding to his ill health and the general gloom over the suffering endured by the people of his country during the war. However, during the war years, Ravel did manage some compositions, including one of his most popular works, Le tombeau de Couperin, a commemoration of the musical ideals of François Couperin, the early 18th-century composer, which premiered in 1919.[58] Each movement is dedicated to a friend of Ravel's who died in the war, with the final movement dedicated to the deceased husband[59] of Ravel’s favorite pianist Marguerite Long.[58] During the war, the Ligue Nationale pour la Defense de la Musique Française (National League for the Defense of French Music) was formed but Ravel, despite his strong antipathy for the German aggression, declined to join stating:
Ravel was exhausted and lacking creative spirit at the war’s end in 1918. With the death of Debussy and the emergence of Satie, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, modern classical music had a new style to which Ravel would shortly re-group and make his contribution.[60] 1920sAround 1920, Diaghilev commissioned Ravel to write La valse (The Waltz), originally named Wien (Vienna), which was to be used for a projected ballet. The piece, conceived many years earlier, became a waltz with a macabre undertone, famous for its "fantastic and fatal whirling". However, it was rejected by Diaghilev as "not a ballet. It's a portrait of ballet". Ravel, hurt by the comment, ended the relationship.[61] Subsequently, it became a popular concert work and when the two men met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev's hand. Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel, but friends persuaded Diaghilev to recant. The two never met again.[62] In 1920, the French government awarded Ravel the Légion d'honneur, but he refused it.[63] The next year, he retired to the French countryside where he continued to write music, albeit even less prolifically, but in more tranquil surroundings.[64] He returned regularly to Paris for performances and socializing, and increased his foreign concert tours. Ravel maintained his influential participation with the SMI which continued its active role of promoting new music, particularly of British and American composers such as Arnold Bax, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, and Virgil Thomson.[65] With Debussy's death, Ravel became perceived popularly as the main composer of French classical music. As Fauré stated in a letter to Ravel in October 1922, "I am happier than you can imagine about the solid position which you occupy and which you have acquired so brilliantly and so rapidly. It is a source of joy and pride for your old professor."[66] In 1922, Ravel completed his Sonata for Violin and Cello. Dedicated to Debussy’s memory, the work features the thinner texture popular with the younger postwar composers.[66] The English, in particular, lauded Ravel, as The Times reported on 16 April 1923, "Since the death of Debussy, he has represented to English musicians the most vigorous current in modern French music."[66] In reality, however, Ravel's own music was no longer considered au courant in France. Satie had become the inspiring force for the new generation of French composers known as Les Six.[67] Ravel was fully aware of this, and was mostly effective in preventing a serious breach between his generation of musicians and the younger group.[67] In post-war Paris, American musical influence was strong. Jazz particularly was played in the cafes and became popular, and French composers including Ravel and Darius Milhaud were applying jazz elements to their work.[21] Also in vogue was a return to simplicity in orchestration and a transition from the great scale of the works of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev were in the ascendant, and Arnold Schoenberg's experiments were leading music into atonality.[68] These trends posed challenges for Ravel, always a slow and deliberate composer, who desired to keep his music relevant but still revered the past. This may have played a part in his declining output and longer composing time during the 1920s.[68] Around 1922, Ravel completed his famous orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky, which through its widespread popularity brought Ravel great fame and substantial profit.[21] The first half of the 1920s was a particularly lean period for composing but Ravel did complete successful concert tours to Amsterdam, Milan, London, Madrid, and Vienna, which also boosted his fame. By 1925, by virtue of the unwelcomed pressure of a performance deadline, he finally finished his opera L'enfant et les sortilèges, with its significant jazz and ragtime accents. Famed writer Colette provided the libretto.[69] Around this time, he also completed Chansons madécasses, the summit of his vocal art.[70] In 1927, Ravel's String Quartet received its first complete recording. By this time Ravel, like Edward Elgar, had become convinced of the importance of recording his works, especially with his input and direction. He made recordings nearly every year from then until his death.[71] That same year, he completed and premiered his Sonata for Violin and Piano, his last chamber work, with its second movement (titled “Blues”) gaining much attention.[72] Ravel also served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.[73] American tourAfter two months of planning, in 1928 Ravel made a four-month concert tour in North America, for a promised minimum of $10,000[71] (approximately $137,000, adjusted for inflation[74]). In New York City, he received a standing ovation, unlike any of his unenthusiastic premieres in Paris. His all-Ravel concert in Boston was equally acclaimed.[75] The noted critic Olin Downes wrote, "Mr. Ravel has pursued his way as an artist quietly and very well. He has disdained superficial or meretricious effects. He has been his own most unsparing critic."[76] Ravel conducted most of the leading orchestras in the U.S. from coast to coast and visited twenty-five cities.[77] He also met the American composer George Gershwin in New York and went with him to hear jazz in Harlem, probably hearing some of the famous jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington.[78] There is a story that when Gershwin met Ravel, he mentioned that he would like to study with the French composer. According to Gershwin, the Frenchman retorted, "Why do you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?"[79] The second part of the story has Ravel asking Gershwin how much money he made. Upon hearing Gershwin's reply, Ravel suggested that maybe he should study with Gershwin. This tale may well be apocryphal: Gershwin seems also to have told a near-identical story about a conversation with Arnold Schoenberg, and some have claimed it was with Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen. It is even recorded that Gershwin attempted to contact Charles Ives at Ives's insurance firm for the same reason, but Ives was on vacation at the time. (See George Gershwin.) In any event, this had to have been before Ravel wrote Boléro, which became financially very successful for him. Ravel then visited New Orleans and imbibed the jazz scene there as well. His admiration of jazz, increased by his American visit, caused him to include some jazz elements in a few of his later compositions, especially the two piano concertos. The great success of his American tour made Ravel famous internationally.[80] Final yearsAfter returning to France, Ravel composed his most famous and controversial orchestral work Boléro, originally called Fandango. Ravel called it "an experiment in a very special and limited direction".[81] He stated his idea for the piece, "I am going to try to repeat it a number of times on different orchestral levels but without any development."[82] He conceived of it as an accompaniment to a ballet and not as an orchestral piece as, in his own opinion, "it has no music in it", and was somewhat taken aback by its popular success.[82] A public dispute began with conductor Arturo Toscanini. The Italian maestro, taking liberties with Ravel's strict instructions, conducted the piece at a faster tempo and with an "accelerando at the finish". Ravel insisted "I don’t ask for my music to be interpreted, but only that it should be played." In the end, the feuding only helped to increase the work's fame. A Hollywood film titled Bolero (1934), starring Carole Lombard and George Raft, made major use of the theme.[83] Ravel made one of the few recordings of his own music when he conducted his Boléro with the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1930. Remarkably, Ravel composed both of his piano concertos simultaneously.[84] He completed the Concerto for the Left Hand first. The work was commissioned by Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during World War I. Ravel was inspired by the technical challenges of the project. As Ravel stated, "In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands."[85] Ravel, not proficient enough to perform the work with only his left hand, demonstrated it with two-hands and Wittgenstein was reportedly underwhelmed by it. But later Wittgenstein stated, "Only much later, after I'd studied the concerto for months, did I become fascinated by it and realized what a great work it was."[86] In 1933, Wittgenstein played the work in concert for the first time to instant acclaim.[87] Critic Henry Prunières wrote, "From the opening measures, we are plunged into a world in which Ravel has but rarely introduced us."[87] The other piano concerto was completed a year later. Its lighter tone follows the models of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, and also makes use of jazz-like themes.[88] Ravel dedicated the work to his favorite pianist, Marguerite Long, who played it and popularized it across Europe in over twenty cities, and they recorded it together in 1932.[89] EMI later reissued the 1932 recording on LP and CD. Although Ravel was listed as the conductor on the original 78-rpm discs, it is possible he merely supervised the recording. Ravel, ever modest, was bemused by the critics' sudden favor of him since his American tour: "Didn't I represent to the critics for a long time the most perfect example of insensitivity and lack of emotion? ... And the successes they have given me in the past few years are just as unimportant.'[87] Illness and deathIn 1932, Ravel suffered a major blow to the head in a taxi accident. This injury was not considered serious at the time.[90] However, afterwards he began to experience aphasia-like symptoms and was frequently absent-minded.[91] It is also possible he had begun experiencing the early stages of Pick's disease. He had begun work on music for a film, Don Quixote (1933) from Miguel de Cervantes's celebrated novel, featuring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and directed by G. W. Pabst. When Ravel became unable to compose, and could not write down the musical ideas he heard in his mind, Pabst hired Jacques Ibert. However, three songs for baritone and orchestra that Ravel composed for the film were later published under the title Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, and have been performed and recorded.[90] On April 8, 2008, the New York Times published an article suggesting Ravel may have been in the early stages of frontotemporal dementia during 1928, and this might account for the repetitive nature of Boléro.[92] This accords with an earlier article, published in a journal of neurology, that closely examines Ravel's clinical history and argues that Boléro and the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand both indicate the impacts of neurological disease.[93] This is contradicted, however, by the earlier cited comments by Ravel about how he created the deliberately repetitious theme for Boléro.[94] In late 1937, Ravel consented to experimental brain surgery, evidently with some hesitation. On 17 December, he entered a hospital in Paris, following the advice of the well-known neurosurgeon Clovis Vincent. Vincent assumed there was a brain tumor, and on 19 December operated on Ravel. No tumor was found, but there was some shrinkage of the left hemisphere of his brain, which was re-inflated with serous fluid. When Ravel awoke from the anesthesia, he asked for his brother, but quickly sank into a deep coma, from which he never awoke.[95] He died on 28 December at the age of 62, in Paris. His friend Maurice Delage was with him at his death. Ravel's death was probably a result of the brain surgery, with the underlying cause arguably being a brain injury caused by the automobile accident in 1932, and not from a brain tumor as some believe.[96] This confusion may arise because his friend George Gershwin had died from a brain tumor only five months earlier. On 30 December 1937, Ravel was buried next to his parents in a granite tomb at the cemetery at Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris. Ravel was an atheist.[97] Personal lifeRavel never married and had no children. He is not known to have had any intimate relationships at all, and his personal life remains a mystery. Ravel made a remark at one time suggesting that because he was such a perfectionist composer, so devoted to his work, he could never have a lasting intimate relationship with anyone.[98] However, according to close friend and student Manuel Rosenthal, he asked violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange to marry him, although she dismissed him, saying "No, Maurice, I'm extremely fond of you, as you know, but only as a friend, and I couldn't possibly consider marrying you".[99] He is quoted as saying "The only love affair I have ever had was with music".[100] Some of his friends suggested that Ravel frequented the bordellos of Paris, but no factual evidence has ever been found to substantiate this rumor.[101] A recent hypothesis presented by David Lamaze, a composition teacher at the Conservatoire de Rennes in France, is that he hid in his music representations of the nickname and the name of Misia Godebska, transcribed into two groups of notes, Godebska = G D E B A and Misia = Mi + Si + A = E B A. He was invited onto her boat during a 1905 cruise on the Rhine after his failure at the Prix de Rome, for which her husband, Alfred Edwards, organized a scandal in the newspapers. This same man owned the Casino de Paris where the Ravel family had a number staged, Tourbillon de la mort ("Whirlwind of Death"). The family of her half-brother, Cipa Godebski, is said to have been like a second family for Ravel. In 1907 on Misia's boat L'Aimée, Ravel completed L'heure espagnole and the Rapsodie espagnole, and at the premiere of Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel arrived late and did not go to his box but to Misia's, where he offered her a Japanese doll. In her memoirs, Misia hid all these facts.[102] In his Maurice Ravel: A Life, published in 2000, biographer Benjamin Ivry presents evidence in support of his thesis that Ravel's lack of known intimate relationships may be explained if he was a "very secretive" gay man. Ivry also attempts to illustrate examples where Ravel's sexuality may have been expressed in his musical compositions. In his review[103] of Ivry's biography for Library Journal Larry Lipkis is persuaded by Ivry's research that "There seems to be little question that Ravel was an affected, intensely secretive dandy with gay inclinations", but also expresses the view that Ivry's work is less persuasive in definitively linking Ravel's sexuality to characteristics of his musical oeuvre. LegacyMany of Ravel's works are protected by copyright in the US. In countries where copyright extends for the life of the composer plus fifty years, such as Canada,[104] or plus seventy years, such as the EU, Ravel's works fell into the public domain in December 1987 or January 1, 2008. The composer died childless and left everything to his brother Edouard who turned Ravel's house into a museum. Edouard was severely injured in a car accident in 1954 and required near constant care. In 1957, Edouard announced his intention to deed 80% of the composer's posthumous royalties to the city of Paris and endow a Nobel Prize in music. Instead, Edouard consigned the rights to his nurse, Jeanne Taverne, and her husband Alexandre, a chauffeur. When Edouard Ravel died in 1960, the Ravel estate fell subject to extensive litigation for ten years, reaching France's highest appellate court. Jeanne Taverne died before the litigation ended. During this period, Jean-Jacques Lemoine, the legal director of SACEM (the organization that collects and distributes royalties in France), froze distribution of Ravel's account. When the litigation concluded, Lemoine resigned from SACEM and set up a shell company, Arima, with Alexandre Taverne for collecting Ravel's royalties. The company is based in Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands in order to avoid French taxes. The two also sued Ravel's publisher, then nearing retirement, to re-write the original contracts, consigning a greater percentage of the royalties to Arima than Durand's publisher. Since that time, the shell company has collected at least £30m and none of Ravel's estate has gone to the Ravel family or to further the cause of French music.[105] MusicalityMusical sourcesActive during a period of great artistic innovation and diversification, Ravel benefited from many sources and influences, though his music defies any facile classification. As Vladimir Jankélévitch notes in his biography, "no influence can claim to have conquered him entirely [...]. Ravel remains ungraspable behind all these masks which the snobbery of the century has attempted to impose."[106] Ravel's musical language was ultimately very original, neither absolutely modernist nor impressionist. Like Debussy, Ravel categorically refused this description of “impressionist” which he believed was reserved exclusively for painting.[107] Ravel was a remarkable synthesist of disparate styles. His music matured early into his innovative and distinct style. As a student, he studied the scores of composers of the past methodically: as he stated, "in order to know one's own craft, one must study the craft of others."[108] Though he liked the new French music, during his youth Ravel still felt fond of the older French styles of Franck and the Romanticism of Beethoven and Wagner.[15] Or, as Viñes put it, discussing Ravel's aesthetics (not his religion):
Certain aspects of his music can be considered to belong to the tradition of 18th-century French classicism beginning with Couperin and Rameau as in Le Tombeau de Couperin. The uniquely 19th-century French sensibilities of Fauré and Chabrier are reflected in Sérénade grotesque, Pavane pour une infante défunte, and Menuet antique, while pieces such as Jeux d'eau, and the String Quartet in F owe something to the innovations of Satie and Debussy. The virtuosity and poetry of Gaspard de la nuit and the Concerto for the Left Hand hint at Liszt and Chopin. His admiration for American jazz is echoed in L'enfant et les sortilèges, the Violin Sonata and the Piano Concerto in G, while the Russian school of music inspired homage in "À la manière de Borodin" and the orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Additionally, he variously cited Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Schubert and Schoenberg as inspirations for various pieces. Musical styleRavel's music was innovative, though he did not follow the contemporary trend towards atonality, as pioneered by Schoenberg. Instead, he applied the aesthetics of the new French school of Chabrier, Satie, and particularly Debussy. Ravel's compositions rely upon modal melodies instead of using the major or minor scales for their predominant harmonic language. He preferred modes with major or minor flavors; for example, the Mixolydian instead of the major scale, and the Aeolian instead of the harmonic minor. As a result, there are virtually no leading tones in his output. Melodically, he tended to favor two modes: the Dorian and the Phrygian.[109] Following the teachings of Gédalge, Ravel placed high importance on melody, once stating to Vaughan Williams, that there is "an implied melodic outline in all vital music."[109] In no way dependent on exclusively traditional modal practices, Ravel used extended harmonies and intricate modulations. He was fond of chords of the ninth and eleventh, and his characteristic harmonies are largely the result of a fondness for unresolved appoggiaturas, such as in the Valses nobles et sentimentales.[110] He was inspired by various dances, his favorite being the minuet, composing the Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn in 1909, to commemorate the centenary of the death of Joseph Haydn. Other forms from which Ravel drew material include the forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera, passacaglia, and the boléro. He believed that composers should be aware of both individual and national consciousness. For him, Basque music was influential. He intended to write an earlier concerto, Zazpiak Bat, but it was never finished. The title is a result of his Basque heritage: meaning 'The Seven Are One' (see Zazpiak Bat), it refers to the seven Basque regions, and was a motto often used in association with the idea of a Basque nation.[111] Instead, Ravel abandoned the piece, using its nationalistic themes and rhythms in some of his other pieces. Ravel also used other folk themes including Hebraic, Greek, and Hungarian.[112] Ravel has almost always been considered one of the two great French impressionist composers, the other being Debussy. In reality Ravel was much more than an Impressionist (and in fact he resented being labelled as such). For example, he made extensive use of rollicking jazz tunes in his Piano Concerto in G Major in the first and third movements.[113] Ravel also imitates Paganini's and Liszt's virtuoso gypsy themes and technique in Tzigane.[114] In his À la manière de...Borodine (In the manner of...Borodin), Ravel plays with the ability to both mimic and remain original. In a more complex situation, A la manière de...Emmanuel Chabrier/Paraphrase sur un air de Gounod ("Faust IIème acte"), Ravel takes on a theme from Gounod's Faust and arranges it in the style of Chabrier. He also composed short pieces in the manner of Haydn and his teacher Fauré.[115] Even in writing in the style of others, Ravel's own voice as a composer remained distinct. Ravel considered himself in many ways a classicist. He often relied on traditional forms, such as the ternary form, as well as traditional structures as ways of presenting his new melodic and rhythmic content, and his innovative harmonies.[116] Ravel stated, "If I were called upon to do so, I would ask to be allowed to identify myself with the simple pronouncements made by Mozart ... He confined himself to saying that there is nothing that music cannot undertake to do, or dare, or portray, provided it continues to charm and always remain music."[117] He often masked the sections of his structure with transitions that disguised the beginnings of the motif. This is apparent in his Valses nobles et sentimentales – inspired by Franz Schubert's collections, Valses nobles and Valses sentimentales – where the seven movements begin and end without pause, and in his chamber music where many movements are in sonata-allegro form, hiding the change from developmental sections to recapitulation.[118] From his own experience, Ravel was cognizant of the effect of new music on the ears of the public and he insightfully wrote:
MethodsHis own composing method was craftsman-like and perfectionistic. Igor Stravinsky once referred to Ravel as "the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers", a reference to the intricacy and precision of Ravel's works.[120] Ravel, who sometimes spent years refining a piece, said, “My objective, therefore, is technical perfection. I can strive unceasingly to this end, since I am certain of never being able to attain it. The important thing is to get nearer to it all the time.”[121] More specifically he stated:
Michael Lanford has observed that "on at least three different published occasions, Ravel testified that 'my teacher in composition was Edgar Allan Poe because of his analysis his wonderful poem 'The Raven.' Poe taught me that true art is a perfect balance between pure intellect and emotion."[122] Therefore, he draws parallels between Ravel's working process and the readings of Poe by French scholars like Charles Baudelaire, who "believed that the ‘unity of impression, the totality of effect’ described by Poe endowed a composition ‘a very special superiority… If the first sentence is not written with the idea of preparing this final impression, the work has failed from the start. There must not creep into the entire composition a single word which is not intentional, which does not tend, directly or indirectly, to complete the premeditated design."[123] Many of his most innovative compositions were developed first as piano music. Ravel used this miniaturist approach to build up his architecture with many finely wrought strokes. To fill the requirements of larger works, he multiplied the number of small building blocks.[116] This demonstrates the great regard he had for the piano traditions of Couperin, Scarlatti, Mozart, Chopin and Liszt.[124] For example, Gaspard de la nuit can be viewed as an extension of Liszt’s virtuosity and advanced harmonics.[125] Even Ravel’s most difficult pieces, however, are marked by elegance and refinement. Walter Gieseking found some of Ravel’s piano works to be among the most difficult pieces for the instrument but always based on “musically perfectly logical concepts”; not just technically demanding but also requiring the right expression.[124] Ravel’s great regard as an orchestrator is also based on his thorough methods. He usually notated the string parts first and insisted that the string section “sound perfectly in and of itself”.[126] In writing for the other sections, he often preferred to score in tutti to produce a full, clear resonance. To add surprise and added color, the melody might start with one instrument and be continued with another.[127] Because of his perfectionism and methods, Ravel’s musical output over four decades is quite small. Most of his works were thought out over considerable lengths of time, then notated quickly, and refined painstakingly.[128] When a piece would not progress, he would abandon a piece until inspired anew.[129] There are only about sixty compositions in all, of which slightly more than half are instrumental. Ravel’s body of work includes pieces for piano, chamber works, two piano concerti, ballet music, opera, and song cycles.[7] Though wide-ranging in his music, Ravel avoided the symphonic form as well as religious themes and forms.[130] Ravel crafted his manuscripts meticulously, and relentlessly polished and corrected them. He destroyed hundreds of sketches and even re-copied entire autographs to correct one mistake. Early printed editions of his works were prone to errors so he worked painstakingly with his publisher, Durand, to correct them.[128] Pianist and conductorThough a competent pianist, Ravel decided early on to have virtuosi, like Ricardo Viñes, premiere and perform his work. As his career evolved, however, Ravel was again called upon to play his own piano music, and to conduct his larger works, particularly during a tour, both of which he considered chores in the same mold as "circus performances". Only rarely did he conduct works of other composers.[131] One London critic stated "His baton is not the magician's wand of a virtuoso conductor. He just stood there beating time and keeping watch".[132] As to how his music was to be played, Ravel was always clear and direct with his instructions.[132] Transcriber and orchestratorRavel was and is a leading figure in the art of transcription and orchestration. During his life Ravel studied the ability of each orchestral instrument carefully in order to determine its possible effects while being sensitive to individual color and timbre.[20] Ravel regarded orchestration as a task separate from composition, involving distinct technical skills. He was always careful to ensure that the writing for each family of instruments worked in isolation as well as in the complete ensemble. While he disapproved of tampering with his own works once completed, orchestration gave him the opportunity to view works in a different context.[19] Among the most famous of his orchestral transcriptions is his own Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917) of which he orchestrated the Prelude, Forlane, Minuet, and Rigaudon movements in 1919. The orchestral version clarifies the harmonic language of the suite and brings sharpness to its classical dance rhythms. Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is best known through its orchestration by Ravel. In this version, produced in 1922, Ravel omits the Promenade between "Samuel" Goldenberg und "Schmuÿle" and Limoges and applies artistic license to some particulars of dynamics and notation as well as putting forth the virtuoso effort of a master colourist throughout. Musical influenceRavel was always a supporter of young musicians, through his society and associations and through his personal individual advice and his help in securing performance dates. His closest students included Maurice Delage, Manuel Rosenthal, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Alexis Roland-Manuel and Vlado Perlemuter.[98] Ravel modeled his teaching methods after his own teacher Gabriel Fauré, avoiding formulas and emphasizing individualism. Ravel's preferred way of teaching would be to have a conversation with his students and demonstrate his points at the piano. He was rigorous and demanding in teaching counterpoint and fugue, as he revered Johann Sebastian Bach without reservation. But in all other areas, he considered Mozart the ideal, with the perfect balance between "classical symmetry and the element of surprise", and with works of clarity, perfect craftsmanship, and measured amounts of lyricism. Often Ravel would challenge a student with "What would Mozart do?" and then ask the student to invent his own solution.[133] Though never a paid critic as Debussy had been, Ravel had strong opinions on historical and contemporary music and musicians, which influenced his younger contemporaries. In creating his own music, he tended to avoid the more monumental composers as models, finding relatively little kinship with or inspiration from Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz or Franck. However, as an outspoken commentator on the Romantic giants, he found much of Beethoven "exasperating", Wagner's influence "pernicious" and Berlioz's harmony "clumsy". He had considerable admiration for other 19th-century masters such as Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Schubert.[134] Despite what he considered its technical deficiencies, Ravel was a strong advocate of Russian music and praised its spontaneity, orchestral color, and exoticism.[135] Notable compositionsMain article: List of compositions by Maurice Ravel
Media depictions
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Free scores
Miscellaneous
Recordings
Institutions
English Journal
Japanese Journal
Related Links
Related Pictures
★リンクテーブル★
「ravel」
|
---|
.