Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel remained unmarried all his life. Although there are many speculations about his love life there is no proof about them. His private life remains a mystery till date.

In October 1932, Ravel hurt his head in a taxi accident. Within a year, he started showing symptoms of aphasia, slowly losing his ability to create music. However, he remained physically and socially fit.

In 1937, he began to suffer pain and underwent an operation, after which there seemed to be a temporary improvement in his condition. But he soon lapsed into coma; dying on 28 December 1937 at the age of 62. He lies buried at the cemetery at Levallois-Perret, in the suburbs of Paris.

Maurice Ravel was born on 7 March 1875 in Ciboure, a small village on the river Nivelle in the Pyrenees region of France, close to its border with Spain. His father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was born in Switzerland. He was a successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer, who was equally passionate about music.

His mother, Marie, née Delouart, was Basque. Although she was barely literate she was a freethinker and imbibed in his son both Basque and Spanish culture. Ravel later recalled his mother singing Spanish folk songs to him.

Three months after his birth, the family moved to Paris, where his younger brother, Édouard, was born three years later. Since no record of his schooling has been found it is not known if Maurice entered any school for his formal education. .

Most biographers believe that his parents, on recognizing his talent early in his childhood, decided to allow him to pursue music, educating him at home. To supplement their bookish education, his father often took the two boys to different factories, teaching them about the latest discoveries in science.

When he was seven years old, Maurice Ravel started piano lessons with Henry Ghys. However, here too his parents played an active role. He had later recalled, ‘My father… knew how to develop my taste and to stimulate my enthusiasm at an early age.”

Initially, Maurice Ravel did not enjoy working at the piano; but bribed by his mother, he practiced enough to earn the ‘premier prix’ (first prize) in 1891 and with that he moved from preparatory to advance level, attending the class of Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot. Concurrently, he studied harmony with Émile Pessard.

Encouraged by Bériot, he made spectacular improvement, composing ‘Sérénade grotesque’, for piano, and ‘Ballade de la Reine morte d'aimer’ on a poem by Rolande de Marès in 1893. These are two of his earliest works to survive in full.

Like most geniuses, Ravel had an independent mind, learning on his own terms, something that was not appreciated by the faculty members. He therefore, failed to earn any other prize, leading to his expulsion from the Conservatoire in 1885.

By now, he had realized that he would not make a great pianist and therefore concentrated on composition, publishing ‘Menuet Antique’ in 1895. It was his first published work. Later in the same year, he wrote ‘Habanera’, a Spanish-themed work for two pianos with Viñes.

In 1897, Ravel was readmitted to the Conservatoire, studying composition with Gabriel Fauré. Fauré not only understood him, but also yielded considerable influence on his development as a composer. Concurrently, Ravel also took private lessons in counterpoint with André Gedalge.

Maurice Ravel was a meticulous but slow worker and thus produced limited number of works. By the end of the first decade of the 1900, he established a pattern by which he created works for piano, later arranging them for full orchestra.

First important work in the line was ’Miroirs’, a piece written for piano in 1904-1905. It consisted of five movements. In 1906, Ravel orchestrated its thirds and fourth movement, ‘Une barque sur l'océan’ and ‘Alborada del gracioso’.

During this period, Ravel also wrote many original works, premiering ‘Histoires Naturelles’ in 1907. Consisting of satirical verses on animals and biting music, it led him into another controversy. Critics claimed that he had plagiarized Claude Debussy’s work.

While the debate raged in the press, Ravel remained calm, orchestrating ‘Rhapsodie espagnole’ section of ‘Habanera’, a work that reflected his Spanish heritage. Premiered in 1908 in Paris, it quickly entered the international repertoire. It is now considered one of his first major works for orchestra.

Continuing to work successfully, Ravel visited London in 1909, playing for the Société des Concerts Français. It not only gained him favorable reviews, but also enhanced his international reputation.