Maurice ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with impressionism(pdf) along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy(PDF), although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920 s and '30 s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's pavne pour une infante defunte
premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire（pdf）; 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（pdf）, neoclassicism（pdf） and, in his later works, jazz.
He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro（web link）
(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（web link）'s Pictures at an Exhibition（web link） 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（web link） (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé（web link） (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.
Piano music
Although Ravel wrote fewer than thirty works for the piano, they exemplify his range; Orenstein remarks that the composer keeps his personal touch "from the striking simplicity of Ma mère l'Oye to the transcendental virtuosity of Gaspard de la nuit." Ravel's earliest major work for piano, Jeux d'eau (1901), is frequently cited as evidence that he evolved his style independently of Debussy, whose major works for piano all came later.When writing for solo piano Ravel rarely aimed at the intimate chamber effect characteristic of Debussy, but sought a Lisztian virtuosity.The authors of The Record Guide consider that works such as Gaspard de la Nuit and Miroirs have a beauty and originality with a deeper inspiration "in the harmonic and melodic genius of Ravel himself."
Most of Ravel's piano music is extremely difficult to play, and presents pianists with a balance of technical and artistic challenges. Writing of the piano music the critic Andrew Clark commented in 2013, "A successful Ravel interpretation is a finely balanced thing. It involves subtle musicianship, a feeling for pianistic colour and the sort of lightly worn virtuosity that masks the advanced technical challenges he makes in Alborada del gracioso ... and the two outer movements of Gaspard de la nuit. Too much temperament, and the music loses its classical shape; too little, and it sounds pale."This balance caused a breach between the composer and Viñes, who said that if he observed the nuances and speeds Ravel stipulated inGaspard de la nuit "Le gibet" would "bore the audience to death". Some pianists continue to attract criticism for over-interpreting Ravel's piano writing.
le tombeau de couperin
Ravel's regard for his predecessors is heard in several of his piano works; Menuet sur le nom de Haydn(1909), À la manière de Borodine (1912), À la manière de Chabrier (1913) and Le tombeau de Couperin all incorporate elements of the named composers interpreted in a characteristically Ravellian manner. Clark comments that those piano works which Ravel later orchestrated are overshadowed by the revised versions: "Listen to Le tombeau de Couperin and the complete ballet music for Ma mère L'Oye in the classic recordings conducted by André Cluytens, and the piano versions never sound quite the same again."
Sonatine (Ravel)
Sonatine is a piano work written by Maurice Ravel. Although Ravel wrote in his autobiography that he wrote the Sonatine after his piano suite Miroirs, it seems to have been written between 1903 and 1905. He most likely referred to the dates he finished both of the works.
Ravel wrote the first movement of the Sonatine for a competition sponsored by the Weekly Critical Reviewmagazine after being encouraged by a close friend who was a contributor to that publication. The competition requirement was the composition of the first movement of a piano sonatina no longer than 75 bars, with the prize being 100 francs. Ravel was the only entrant. His Sonatina was disqualified, however, for being a few bars too long. The competition was ultimately cancelled as the magazine was close to bankruptcy at the time. Two years later, Ravel completed the second and third movements and the complete sonatine was published shortly afterwards.
The Sonatine was first performed in Lyon in March 1906 by Mme Paule de Lestang. Shortly afterwards it received its Paris premiere, where it was played by Gabriel Grovlez. The work was dedicated to Ida and Cipa Godebski; he later dedicated his Ma mère l'oye suite to their children.
he piece is in three movements:
- I. Modéré ("moderate")
- II. Mouvement de menuet ("Minuet movement")
- III. Animé ("animated")
Although the piece is titled 'Sonatine' rather than 'Sonata', the diminutive refers to the modest length of the piece and not to any simplicity, either in structure or ease of execution. Indeed, shortly after the Lyons performance, Ravel wrote that although he was pleased with the public reception, he was worried about the difficult nature of his piece. Although Ravel did record a piano roll of the first two movements, he felt unable to play the technical third movement and frequently left it out while playing concerts in America in the late 1920s.
The opening theme of the first movement is subject to variations and transformations in the second and third movements, especially the opening 'falling fourth' motif, which is reversed into a series of ascending fourth 'horn calls' at the start of the third movement. The first movement is in sonata-allegro form and echoes of the following transformations can already be heard in the final bars. The second minuet movement lacks the traditional trio section, in keeping with the shortened form of the Sonatine. While it is structurally based on the minuet, Ravel's use of accents and changes in tempo stop the movement from turning into a simple waltz. The third movement is a very difficult piece and has been described as a virtuosic tour de force;technical challenges include wild arpeggios, polyrhythms, rapid ostinati in awkward intervals, and hands conflicting with each other at great speed. This toccata movement was inspired by Ravel's French predecessorsJean-Philippe Rameau and François Couperin; Ravel would later expand the proportions used in this piece to structure the Toccata section of Le tombeau de Couperin.
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