Maurice Ravel, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Maurice Ravel

French composer

Date of Birth: 07-Mar-1875

Place of Birth: Ciboure, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

Date of Death: 28-Dec-1937

Profession: composer, conductor, pianist, musician, choreographer

Nationality: France

Zodiac Sign: Pisces


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About Maurice Ravel

  • Joseph Maurice Ravel French: [??z?f m??is ?av?l]; 7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor.
  • He is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term.
  • In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; 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 and incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz.
  • He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, BolĂ©ro (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's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known. 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 church music.
  • Many of his works exist in two versions: first, a piano score and later an orchestration.
  • Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et ChloĂ© (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.

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