Maurice Ravel essays

Maurice Ravel essays Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, March 7, 1875. His father's background was Swiss and his mothers was Basque, but he was brought up in Paris. Here he studied at the Conservatoire from approximately 1889 to 1895, returning in 1897 to study further with Faure and Gedalge. Ravel never married, but he did have several long-running relationships. He was also known to frequent the bordellos of Paris. During his schooling in Paris, Ravel joined with a number of innovative young composers who referred to themselves as the "Apaches" because of their wild abandon. The group was well known for its drunken revelry. In 1893, he met Chabrier and Satie, both who were influential to his future career as a musician. Ravel was also highly influenced from music around the world including American Jazz, Asian music, and traditional folk songs from across Europe. Ravel was not religious and was probably an atheist. He disliked the openly religious themes of other composers, such as Wagner, and instead preferred to look to classical mythology for inspiration. A decade later he was a well-known composer, at least of songs and piano pieces, working with great care he could imitate a composer such as Lisztian bravura, or a style like Renaissance calm. During the next decade, when he was in his thirties, he was producing most of his works. There was a rivalry with Debussy and some arguments about priority in musical discoveries, but Ravel's taste in music was clearly different from any other composers work, as well as the grand virtuosity of much of his piano music from this period. Many of Ravels works were known to show his fascination with things temporally or geographically distant, or the imagination of childhood, as in Ma mre l'oye. "From childhood he had a particular liking for minute objects, miniatures, the tiny world of figurines, little things that worked by clockwork, mechanical birds 'whose hea ...