Classic Music - Joseph Maurice Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (French: [ʒɔzɛf 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 religious
works. Many of his works exist in two versions: a first, piano score and
a later 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.
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