Music Library Thematic Displays: Ravel's 150th Birthday

Joseph Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) 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. 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.     

Gaspard de la Nuit is a three-movement piano suite composed by Maurice Ravel in 1908. Drawing inspiration from the poems in Aloysius Bertrand's collection of the same title, it stands as a pinnacle of Impressionist piano music, renowned for its poetic imagery and demanding technical execution. the final movement, Scarbo, which is often regarded as one of the most technically difficult pieces in the piano repertoire. (1)

Setting a charming text by Colette, Ravel’s richly scored opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells), (1925) is a lyric fantasy whose cast includes fairy tale characters, crockery, plants, and little animals which come to life to chastise the child who has been tormenting them. However, all ends happily when the child learns compassion. Ravel’s life-long fascination with the exotic orient found inspiration in three poems by Tristan Klingsor, brought together in his ravishing and enduringly popular song cycle Shéhérazade. (2)

Ravel's exceptional talent for creating authentic Spanish music, admired by Manuel de Falla, was exemplified by his Rapsodie. Composed in 1907, the Rapsodie's first movement, Prélude à la nuit (Prelude to the Night), begins with and is dominated by a four-note descending figure which later is brought into the Malagueña and Feria movements. (3)

Ravel's Boléro is a unique 15-minute piece consisting of two tunes repeatedly played in an orchestra, ‘without music in it’, as Ravel himself said. The only changes in the piece comes from how Ravel orchestrates the two tunes, the way he structures the piece as a single, gigantic crescendo, and the surprise modulation at its end. Machinery – musical and industrial – is Boléro’s other essential resource. Ravel loved machines. On a US tour earlier in the Boléro year of 1928, he arranged a special visit to the Ford factory in Detroit. (4)

Daphnis et Chloé is a 1912 choreographic symphony for orchestra and wordless chorus by Ravel. It is composed in three main sections and a dozen scenes, mostly dances, and lasts just under an hour. It is often presented as a ballet, but is more commonly given as a concert work. The dance scenario was adapted by choreographer Michel Fokine from a pastoral romance by the Greek writer Longus thought to date from the 2nd century AD, recounting the love between the goatherd Daphnis and the shepherdess Chloé.