Maurice Ravel
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Maurice Ravel was among the most significant and influential composers of the early 20th century.Spotify
Although he is frequently linked with Claude Debussy as an exemplar of musical impressionism, and some of their works have a surface resemblance, Ravel possessed an independent voice that grew out of his love of a broad variety of styles, including the French Baroque, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Spanish folk traditions, and American jazz and blues. His elegant and lyrically generous body of work was not large in comparison with that of some of his contemporaries, but his compositions are notable for being meticulously and exquisitely crafted.Spotify
He was especially gifted as an orchestrator, an area in which he remains unsurpassed. Ravel's mother was of Basque heritage, a fact that accounted for his lifelong fascination with Spanish music, and his father was a Swiss inventor and engineer, most likely the source of his commitment to precision and craftsmanship. At the age of 14, he entered the Paris Conservatory, where he was a student from 1889 to 1895 and from 1897 to 1903.Spotify
His primary composition teacher was Gabriel Fauré. A major disappointment of his life was his failure to win the Prix de Rome in spite of numerous attempts. The difficulty was transparently the conflict between the conservative administration of the Conservatory and Ravel's independent thinking, meaning his association with the French avant-garde (Debussy), and his interest in non-French traditions (Wagner, the Russian nationalists, Balinese gamelan).Spotify
He had already established himself as a composer of prominence with works such as his String Quartet, and the piano pieces Pavane pour une infante défunte, Jeux d'eau, and the Sonatine, and his loss of the Prix de Rome in 1905 was considered such a scandal that the director of the Conservatory was forced to resign. Ravel continued to express admiration for Debussy's music throughout his life, but as his own reputation grew stronger during the first decade of the century, a mutual professional jealousy cooled their personal relationship. Around the same time, he developed a friendship with Igor Stravinsky.Spotify
The two became familiar with each other's work during Stravinsky's time in Paris and worked collaboratively on arrangements for Sergey Diaghilev. Between 1909 and 1912, Ravel composed Daphnis et Chloé for Diaghilev and Les Ballets Russes. It was the composer's largest and most ambitious work and is widely considered his masterpiece.Spotify
He wrote a second ballet for Diaghilev, La Valse, which the impresario rejected, but which went on to become one of his most popular orchestral works. Following his service in the First World War as an ambulance driver and the death of his mother in 1917, his output was temporarily diminished. In 1925, the Monte Carlo Opera presented the premiere of another large work, the "lyric fantasy" L'enfant et les sortilèges, a collaboration with writer Colette.Spotify
American jazz and blues became increasingly intriguing to the composer. In 1928 he made a hugely successful tour of North America, where he met George Gershwin and had the opportunity to broaden his exposure to jazz. Several of his most important late works, such as the Sonata for Violin and Piano No.Spotify
2 and the Piano Concerto in G show the influence of that interest. Ironically, Ravel, who in his youth was rejected by some elements of the French musical establishment for being a modernist, in his later years was scorned by Satie and the members of Les Six as being old-fashioned, a symbol of the establishment. In 1932, an injury he sustained in an automobile accident started a physical decline that resulted in memory loss and an inability to communicate.Spotify
He died in 1937, following brain surgery. In spite of leaving one of the richest and most important bodies of work of any early 20th century composer, one that included virtually every genre except for symphony and liturgical music, Ravel is most often remembered for an arrangement of another composer's work, and for a piece he considered among his least significant. His orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition has been wildly popular with concertgoers (and the royalties from it made Ravel a rich man).Spotify
Boléro, a 15-minute Spanish dance in which a single theme is repeated in a variety of instrumental guises, has been ridiculed for its insistent repetitiveness, but it is also a popular favorite and one of the most familiar and frequently performed orchestral works of the 20th century.Spotify
role: composer · 90%era: Romanticmovement: impressionism1875–1937
Movement
impressionism · Wikipedia
Impressionism in music was a movement among various composers in Western classical music whose music focuses on mood and atmosphere, "conveying the moods and emotions aroused by the subject rather than a detailed tone‐picture". "Impressionism" is a philosophical and aesthetic term borrowed from late 19th-century French painting after Monet's Impression, Sunrise. Composers were labeled Impressionists by analogy to the Impressionist painters who use starkly contrasting colors, effect of light on an object, blurry foreground and background, flattening perspective, etc. to make the observer focus their attention on the overall impression.
How this movement sounds
color over cadenceblurred harmonyfloating rhythmtimbremodes
Impressionism listening cues: atmosphere and timbre first. Harmony can feel 'blurred' or unresolved, with color-chords that don't rush to cadences.
Rhythm may feel flexible or floating; melodies can be fragmentary, like gestures rather than speeches.
Listen for orchestral color, modes, and unusual chord combinations that paint a scene more than they build a dramatic argument.
A helpful ear-training trick: notice how often the music avoids obvious dominant-to-tonic cadences. The feeling is often suspended, like light shifting rather than a story 'arriving'.
How Maurice Ravel sounds
rubatorich harmonylong melodybig dynamicscoloristic pedal
Romantic music tends to foreground emotion and color: long singing melodies, flexible tempo (rubato), and harmony that stretches and sighs.
You often hear thicker textures, wider dynamic range, and a more "orchestral" use of the piano with deep bass and resonant pedaling.
Look for heightened contrast and personal voice: the same musical gesture can feel intimate one moment and heroic the next.
Wikipedia
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor.Wikipedia
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.Wikipedia
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 and incorporating elements of modernism, 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.Wikipedia
Renowned for his abilities in orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' piano music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known. 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.Wikipedia
Many of his works exist in two…Wikipedia
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Study resources & scores
Curated study material and indexed score links related to Maurice Ravel.
Lecture 21. Musical Impressionism and Exoticism: Debussy, Ravel and Monet
Yale (YouTube) · lecture · youtube, transcript
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Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra - Maurice Ravel - Bolero
2025YouTube14mLivepub 2025-06-16
YouTube · FREE · 14m · published 2025-06-16
FreeLive
La valse - Maurice Ravel's choreographic poem performed by the Mariinsky Orchestra
2025YouTube14mLivepub 2025-03-18
YouTube · FREE · 14m · published 2025-03-18
FreeLive
Maurice Ravel - Piano Concerto for the Left Hand | performance by Pierre-Laurent Aimard
YouTube · FREE · 19m · published 2025-03-18
FreeLive
Live from Montreal - Ylan Chu (Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schubert)
2025YouTube1h 3mFull concertLivepub 2025-02-11
YouTube · FREE · 1h 3m · published 2025-02-11
FreeFull concertLongLive
1 Hours Maurice Ravel | Studying and Healing | Excellent Musical Performance
YouTube · FREE · 1h 19m · published 2022-02-12
FreeFull concertLongLive
Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) / Maurice Ravel / James Gaffigan / Oslo Philharmonic
2022YouTube26mLivepub 2022-02-12
YouTube · FREE · 26m · published 2022-02-12
FreeLongLive
Bolero / Maurice Ravel / Vasily Petrenko / Oslo Philharmonic
2022YouTube16mLivepub 2022-02-12
YouTube · FREE · 16m · published 2022-02-12
FreeLive
"Gaspard de la nuit" Maurice Ravel, Alice-Sara Ott piano recital part3
2020YouTube25mLivepub 2020-02-13
YouTube · FREE · 25m · published 2020-02-13
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Maurice Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit (complete)(Jackie Leung- LIVE)
YouTube · FREE · 25m · published 2019-02-13
FreeLongLive
Maurice Ravel - Daphnis et Chloé | Jukka-Pekka Saraste | WDR Symphony Orchestra | WDR Radio Choir
YouTube · FREE · 55m · published 2017-02-13
FreeFull concertLongLive
Maurice Ravel: String Quartet in F major LIVE at Wigmore Hall
YouTube · FREE · 31m · published 2016-02-14
FreeLongLive
ARCHIVIO IEM: Maurice Ravel, Bolero ( London Symphony Orchestra / Valery Gergiev)
YouTube · FREE · 19m · published 2014-02-14
FreeLive
Maurice Ravel – Le Tombeau de Couperin (Complete) | Doctoral Recital, SWBTS 2009
2009YouTube27mLivepub 2016-02-14
YouTube · FREE · 27m · published 2016-02-14
FreeLongLive
Maurice Ravel à Montfort-l'Amaury | Exposition Ravel Boléro
Philharmonie de Paris · FREE · 6m
FreeLive