Ravel, Maurice 1875-1937
French composer

Ravel was born in Ciboure in the Basque region. He went to the Paris Conservatoire as a piano student in 1889, and later joined Gabriel Faur�'s composition class. His first orchestral piece, the overture Sch�h�razade, had a hostile reception on its first performance in 1899, but he won recognition in the same year with the Pavane pour une infante d�funte ('Pavane for a Dead Princess'), which is strongly redolent of his Basque background.

He tried four times for the Prix de Rome, and the fourth time he was barred from entering. He himself was indifferent, but the case was seized on by the press as an example of personal prejudice in high quarters. Now at the height of his powers, he wrote a string quartet (1902-03), the exotic and beautiful Introduction and Allegro for a group of instruments including harp, and the piano pieces Sonatine (1905, 'Little Sonata'), Miroirs (1905, 'Mirrors'), Ma M�re l'Oye (1908, 'Mother Goose') and Gaspard de la nuit (1908, 'Gaspard of the Night'). In 1909 he began the music for the Diaghilev ballet Daphnis et Chlo� ('Daphnis and Chloe'), which was first performed in 1912. His comic opera L'Heure espagnole ('The Spanish Hour') was completed in 1907 and produced in 1911.

When World War I broke out he joined the army and for a short time saw active service until he was discharged for health reasons; his Tombeau de Couperin (1917, 'The Tomb of Couperin'), a piano suite in 18th-century style which he later orchestrated, was dedicated to friends killed in action. The choreographic poem La Valse, epitomizing the spirit of Vienna, was staged in 1920, and the opera L'Enfant et les sortil�ges ('The Child and His Spells'), written to a libretto by Colette, in 1925. To this late period also belong the two piano concertos (1929-31), one for the left hand and written for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the war, and Bol�ro (1928), originally intended as a miniature ballet.

He visited England in 1928 and received an honorary doctorate at Oxford University. In 1933 his mental faculties began to fail, and it was found that he had a tumour on the brain. He composed no more but remained fairly active physically, and was able to tour Spain before he died.

His music is scintillating and dynamic; he defied the established rules of harmony with his unresolved sevenths and ninths and other devices, his syncopation and strange sonorities, and he made the piano sound as it had never sounded before. His orchestrations are brilliant, especially in their masterly use of wind instruments and unusual percussion effects, often characteristically French, sometimes with a Spanish flavour. It is interesting that his only work written purely for orchestra is Rapsodie espagnole (1907); everything else orchestral is either opera, ballet, or orchestrated piano pieces.

Bibliography: Ravel's own writings, and memoirs by Jean Cocteau, Colette and others, are listed in R Nichols, Ravel (1977), which is an excellent short biographical study. See also James Burnett, Ravel, His Life and Times (1983); Rollo H Myers, Ravel: Life and Works (1960); Victor I Seroff, Maurice Ravel (1953).