KULTURA / CULTURE
THE MAGIC OF MAURICE RAVEL A quiet man and his enormous impact on music This year’s celebration of the 150 th anniversary of Ravel’s birth provides a welcome opportunity to explore a composer who, like many other innovative artists, doesn’t fit neatly into one category C onsidered one of the most significant representatives of Impressionism in music, Maurice Ravel nonetheless didn’t like being categorised and defined. He said that he “endeav- oured, above all, to do entirely varied things”, expressed through modern ele- ments, Baroque and neoclassical idioms and even jazz with his own unique brand of colour, clarity of texture and intrica- tant foundation for his lifelong pursuit. Ravel was born in 1875 in a small vil- lage in the Basque Pyrenees mountains of France, near the southwestern bor- der with Spain. From his adored moth- er, a French Basque, and from childhood summers spent in the Basque moun- tains, he developed an enduring affec- tion to folklore and Spanish music, so evident in his L’Heure Espagnol, Bolero, Rhapsody Espagnol or Pavane pour une infante défunte. From his father, a Swiss civil engineer (who invented one of the first internal combustion engines), Rav- el acquired the attention to intricacy and detail that would become a hallmark of his music. Igor Stravinsky, a friend and admirer of Ravel, called him “a perfect Swiss watchmaker”. cies in nearly all genres of music... His early years provided an impor- Another important influence was the Paris Conservatory, where he studied pi-
ano and composition with the venera- ble Gabriel Fauré. But his time there was not without controversy – his early com- positions were deemed too modern. He joined an avant-garde music group, Les Apaches (The Hooligans) to explore new sounds, and lost out on the prestigious Prix de Rome multiple times due to a conservative judging panel, which led to the resignation of the Conservatory’s di- rector. Music was experiencing significant change in this early period of the 20 th century, with new ideas of harmony and structure emerging and new sounds tak- ing hold. Ravel grasped and moulded them within his own very individualistic style. It was precisely his forward-look- ing ideas, which he sometimes used within traditional structures, that ren- dered Ravel’s music unique. Like his el- der contemporary and friend Claude Debussy, Ravel disliked being referred to as “Impressionistic”, though he so deft- ly expressed mood and atmosphere with colour, luminescence and refinement, like a paint brush gently caressing a mu- sical picture. It’s no surprise that his mu- sic idol was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Classical master of grace and ele- gance. Ravel’s talent extended beyond piano to orchestral and chamber music, op- era and song. Inspired by Nicholai Rim-
sky-Korsakov, Ravel became a master or- chestrator, sensitive to texture, density, luminescence and transparency. He or- chestrated several of his piano works and his compositions written specifical- ly for orchestra remain well-regarded: the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, composed for the acclaimed Ballets Russes; the fa- mous Bolero, a study of repetition with varying textures and intensity in the form of a Spanish dance; and his Rhap- sody Espagnol, a sound-fest of Spanish rhythms and instrumentation that drew on his love of Spain. He explored new av- enues with tinges of jazz, influenced by his friend George Gershwin and his bril- liant orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pic- tures at an Exhibition is the mostly wide- ly-performed orchestral version of that great programmatic work. During his lifetime, Ravel enjoyed pop- ular success and admiration among his peers. Following Debussy’s death in 1918, Ravel became the most popular living French composer. He toured Cana- da and the United States in 1928 and re- ceived an honorary Doctor of Music de- gree from Oxford University in England. Although he had a small, loyal circle of friends, Ravel was a quiet and private man, living alone in his rural home out- side of Paris. His health deteriorated rap- idly after a vehicle accident, the compli- cations of which led to his death in 1937.
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