De Falla later wrote: “The Rapsodie Espagnole by Ravel surprised me because of its Spanish character. He spoke fluent Spanish - so much so that Manuel de Falla, a native Spaniard himself, described him as being more Spanish than the Spanish.
His Basque mother used to sing him Spanish folksongs in the cradle and even later in life he too thought of himself as Basque. Ravel was born near the Spanish border, at Ciboure on the outskirts of Hendaye, at the absolute extreme south-western corner of France, literally within walking distance of Spain.
He was quintessentially French, and yet very Spanish Ravel simply synthesised them all into his own unique musical voice. And all that’s before we even get to his lifelong love of the music of Spain ( Rapsodie Espagnole, Alborada del Gracioso). Then there was the music of Asia and the Orient that so influenced his harmonies (the Piano Trio, Chansons Madecasses). Boléro was a clear predecessor of modern minimalism, and Tzigane found its influence in folk traditions. He composed several different works inspired by the Viennese waltz ( La Valse, Valses Nobles et Sentimentales), and yet he became one of the first composers to include jazz and blues in his music (the Piano Concerto, the Second Violin Sonata). Sure, he was an Impressionist at times (as in his Daphnis et Chloe, or Miroirs), but he was also the exact opposite in that his music could be neo-Classical or more specifically neo-Baroque ( Le Tombeau de Couperin).
His music is so distinctive in sound, and yet every label that you care to put on him barely covers 20 percent of his work. It’s impossible to identify Maurice Ravel with any particular school of composition, except perhaps to say that there can be few composers in history whose music has embraced and synthesised so many different influences. 1. Name a modern musical genre, and Ravel was probably a formative part of it He was, quite simply, a composer whose interests and influences could sometimes be surprising. Maurice Ravel was among the most significant and influential composers of the early twentieth century.Įven though he’s sometimes linked with Claude Debussy as an exemplar of musical impressionism, Ravel possessed an independent voice that grew out of his love of a broad variety of styles.
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