| Abstract |
"This biography of Maurice Ravel is the result of several years' penetrating research, not only on the influences and meanings of Ravel's particular genius, but on the carefully guarded personal life of the great French musician. It is the only study of the modern French master available in English. Although born in the Basque village of Ciboure near the border of Spain, Ravel was raised in the Montmartre district of Paris and became the epitome of the sophisticated, elegant Parisian. He was a fastidious and sartorially resplendent little man (he was but five feet tall) who, aside from his music, delighted in children, in Parisian night life, and in travels to Spain, Africa, England, and the United States. But Ravel the composer studied and worked and developed as though oblivious of the ferment his 'division of the laws of harmony' caused. A mild man, he nevertheless perpetrated violent reactions and caused three famous affaires Ravel. The first was his unfair exclusion from the Prix de Rome contest. The second, the celebrated newspaper controversy of Ravel and Debussy, is available here in book form for the first time. Ravel's third affaire was his sensational refusal of the Légion d'Honneur. Ravel's undeniable gifts as a musical innovator were inspired by his teachers, Fauré and Satie, and developed during one of the most artistically productive and revolutionary periods of the twentieth century. Compared to many composers, Ravel's musical output was small. He was an extremely careful and painstaking worker, but his working habits did not curb his own inventiveness nor affect his infinite versatility. A list of Ravel's compositions is both distinguished and varied, ranging from small pieces for the piano (Pavane pour une Infante défunte, the three pieces that comprise the Gaspard de la Nuit) to piano concertos (one of the two being the miraculous Concerto for the Left Hand Alone); art songs (in the Spanish, Hebraic, Greek, Russian, Italian, Scottish, and Madagascan manners); music for the theater (Daphnis et Chloë, La Valse, Boléro); orchestrations (Schumann's Carnaval, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition); and chamber music (one trio, one quartet)." --Dust jacket. |
