Igor Stravinsky referred to his friend as “the Swiss clockmaker of music.” Ravel’s father, Joseph, was also musically inclined, having studied piano and won awards at the Conservatory in Geneva, but he was also gifted in mechanics and in inventing machinery, and decided to pursue engineering. Goss credits this experience with inspiring a lifelong love for rhythm in Ravel. Young Maurice loved the fête days in Ciboure, when the townspeople would make music and dance the fandango. Goss’s biography, Bolero: The Life of Maurice Ravel (Holt and Company, 1945), while a friendly portrayal, nonetheless gives a helpful overview of the main events in Ravel’s life and of the evolution of his art. Ravel lived in Paris from a few months of age, but he returned to the place of his mother’s birth, Ciboure, on the Basque coast, every summer. Ravel’s skills as an orchestrator, his devotion to rhythm, and his “passion for perfection,” in the words of biographer Madeleine Goss, are his enduring legacies.
He considered that piece more of an experiment or a gageure–a wager with himself that he could turn one musical phrase into an orchestral composition, and he referred to it as “orchestral tissue without music.” It consists of one main theme that is repeated and embellished throughout. And yet Ravel is much more than Bolero, as he would have been the first to tell you. All you have to do is listen to Bolero, for which he is best known, to perceive this on a visceral level. Another reason for his appeal now, when the public health crisis has disrupted all of our quotidian rhythms, is that rhythm is the sine qua non of Ravel’s art. Described by his close friend, concert pianist Ricardo Viñes, as “inclined by temperament toward the poetic and fanciful,” Ravel created music that continues to captivate with its otherworldly beauty.
As reality continues to be fraught, in the midst of a pandemic, social unrest, culture wars, and on and on, Ravel’s music offers an enticing escape. Lately I’ve been craving the music of French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937).
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