{"id":49065,"date":"2024-10-27T18:08:50","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T17:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d22934d1-b6f2-406c-88cd-4845af56fc73"},"modified":"2024-10-27T19:07:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T18:07:16","slug":"maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Maurice Ravel: the ‘most perfect of Swiss watchmakers’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Sunday, 27 October 2024 at 17:08 PM<\/p>

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\u2018My only mistress is music.\u2019 This famous declaration, by composer Maurice Ravel, of absolute fidelity to his art tells you much of what you need to know about this inimitable composer, whom Stravinsky<\/a><\/strong> famously called ‘the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers’, a reference to the incredible intricacy and perfect design of Ravel’s music. What’s more, this profession of utmost loyalty to his art must be a front and centre in any discussion of Ravel’s creativity and personality \u2013 not just his sexuality, favourite subject for speculation though that is.<\/p>

All 12 Stravinsky ballets, ranked<\/a><\/strong> <\/li><\/ul>
<\/div><\/figure><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-who-was-ravel\">Who was Ravel?<\/h2><p>Music was, to Maurice Ravel, his life, his passion, and nothing would induce him to sell it short by producing a score of less than complete integrity. There is scarcely one Ravel work that is not wholly comprehensible in musical terms or that requires reference to external circumstances to explain it. However, recently, there have been efforts to trace the progress of the disease that was to lead to the composer\u2019s death, at the age of 62, in 1937.<\/p><p>The French writer <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/books\/page-turner\/the-idiosyncratic-fictions-of-jean-echenoz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jean Echenoz<\/a><\/strong> holds such a fascination for the subject that in 2006 he published a novel about it. His <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/dp\/1595586709\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><em>Ravel<\/em><\/a><\/strong> is redolent of research at Le Belv\u00e9d\u00e8re, the Ravel house at Montfort-l\u2019Amaury, and yet so faulty in biographical and musicological detail that it carries little credibility as either fact or fiction. <\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-are-ravel-s-greatest-works\">What are Ravel’s greatest works?<\/h2><p>Of course, if there are signs of mental decay in such works as <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/ravel-bolero-why-so-unique\">Bol\u00e9ro<\/a><\/strong><\/em> and the Left-hand Piano Concerto in D \u2013 two of the greatest orchestral works in the 20th-century repertoire and at the same time two of the most commonly chosen subjects for neurological case study \u2013 we should not shrink from learning about them. But anyone who takes the risk of associating the repetitions in <em>Bol\u00e9ro<\/em> with frontotemporal dementia, for example, should be very certain of the facts.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wiener Philharmoniker - Maurice Ravel - Bolero - Regente Gustavo Dudamel (HD)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E9PiL5icwic?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><p>Not compulsive but coolly deliberate, the repetitive pattern of <em>Bol\u00e9ro<\/em> is in fact an inspired solution to a professional problem. Having set aside just enough time to orchestrate a selection of piano pieces by Alb\u00e9niz for a ballet score on a Spanish theme, Ravel found that the arrangement rights had been reserved for his Spanish colleague Enrique Arb\u00f3s. He first panicked and then conceived the idea of creating a score that would take no longer to complete than an exercise in orchestration.<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-bolero-hypnotic-but-calculated\">Bol\u00e9ro: ‘hypnotic, but calculated’<\/h3><p>Once he had invented the appropriately Spanish-coloured melodic material, he was up and running. \u2018Don\u2019t you think this tune has something insistent about it?\u2019 he asked a friend while playing it for him with one finger on the piano. \u2018I\u2019m going to try and repeat it a good few times without any development while gradually building it up with my very best orchestration.\u2019<\/p><p><em>Bol\u00e9ro<\/em> is not only hypnotic but also calculated in construction. If Maurice Ravel had ever demonstrated obsessively repetitive behaviour in his everyday life and if he were not still to write three works which betray no such thing \u2013 the two piano concertos and the <em>Don Quichotte <\/em>songs \u2013 there would be something in the <em>Bol\u00e9ro<\/em>-as-dementia theory. In fact, it is as unreasonable as diagnosing dementia in the apparently even more obsessive minimalist composers of today.<\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/composer-obsessions\">‘He kissed the skulls of Beethoven and Schubert’: the bizarre obsessions of some of classical music’s greatest composers<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Yuja Wang - Ravel G Major Piano Concerto plus encores\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3iFbM_08H7U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-how-many-piano-concertos-did-ravel-write\">How many piano concertos did Ravel write?<\/h2><p>When it comes to the Left-hand Piano Concerto, an oddly persistent old theory that it indicates that one side of the composer\u2019s brain was not functioning is easily disposed of. Ravel composed the piece for left hand only because it had been commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I. <\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/5-essential-works-left-hand-piano\">Five essential works for left-hand piano<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><p>Some commentators insist on finding something sinister about it. That, even though a piano concerto written largely for the lower part of the solo instrument was always going to produce a dark-coloured score \u2013 and not only in the piano part. As the work begins, with a low rumble on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/instruments\/cello\">cellos<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/double-bass-guide\">basses<\/a><\/strong> and then a double-bassoon solo, Ravel introduces the orchestra as, in a sense, left-handed too.<\/p><p>Here is a performance of the Concerto in D from <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/who-is-yuja-wang-a-guide-to-the-celebrated-pianist-and-her-best-recordings\">Yuja Wang<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Yuja Wang - Ravel Left Hand Piano Concerto\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZbEtk1kdYx4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><p>It is true that Ravel is on record as expressing the opinion that \u2018the music of a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-concerto\">concerto<\/a><\/strong> should be light-hearted and brilliant and not aim at profundity or dramatic effects\u2019. But, working at much the same time on the \u2018light-hearted and brilliant\u2019 Piano Concerto in G (one of the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/greatest-piano-concertos-all-time\">greatest piano concertos of all time<\/a><\/strong>), the professional in him knew that he had to produce something different. <\/p><p>The Concerto in G might, as he said, be \u2018more Ravel\u2019 but the Concerto in D proved to be a far greater contribution to Wittgenstein\u2019s left-hand repertoire than anything the pianist got from such mentally unscathed composers as <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/richard-strauss\">Richard Strauss<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/sergey-prokofiev\">Prokofiev<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/benjamin-britten-composer\">Britten<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Was Ravel gay? <\/h2><p>Ravel\u2019s personal life and sexuality have been subject to plenty of speculation. In fact, no evidence has been found to confirm any romantic or sexual relationships. Biographers and music scholars have variously speculated that Ravel may have been gay, asexual, or simply not motivated by intimate relationships with other people.<\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/beethoven-frieze\">The Beethoven frieze: sex, scandal, and a temple devoted to a great composer<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><p>One Ravel biographer, Arbie Orenstein, suggests that Maurice Ravel was so dedicated to his work that he was unable, or unwilling, to form close personal relationships. Elsewhere, another biographer, Benjamin Ivry, has taken the view that Ravel may have been homosexual, based on his social circles, friendships, and associations with other artists. What is certainly true is that the composer admired and collaborated with various key figures from the Parisian avant-garde, including the poet Colette and artists in the legendary <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/ballets-russes-guide\">Ballets Russes<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p><p>Ultimately, though, we know little about Ravel’s personal or emotional life. His music is eloquent enough on its own, without any extraneous commentary.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-did-ravel-do-in-world-war-i\">What did Ravel do in World War I?<\/h2><p>Of course, Ravel did suffer mental and physical traumas profound enough to affect both his personality and work. We will probably never know what happened to him in his early youth to convince him that, as he told pianist Marguerite Long, \u2018love never rises above licentiousness\u2019. <\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/composers-love-lives\">These six composers had miserable love lives – but forged sublime music from them<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><p>We do, on the other hand, know about the dangers, illnesses and deprivations he experienced as a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/what-did-maurice-ravel-do-during-world-war-1\">soldier at Verdun in World War I<\/a><\/strong>. <em>Le tombeau de Couperin<\/em> and <em>La valse<\/em> \u2013 the latter of which begins like the Left-hand Concerto in the darkest depths of the orchestra and ends as catastrophically as <em>Bol\u00e9ro<\/em> \u2013 bear the marks of that experience.<\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/gaspard-de-la-nuit\"><em>Gaspard de la Nuit<\/em>: a guide to Ravel’s haunting piano cycle and its best recordings<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Inconsolable grief<\/h3><p>Another wartime misfortune was the death of his mother in 1917, causing him inconsolable grief. The conflict between what Maurice saw as his duty to stay with his mother and his duty to enlist in the defence of his country in 1914, a conflict reflected in the Piano Trio, was probably the most intense emotional crisis in his life. <em>L\u2019enfant et les sortil\u00e8ges<\/em>, which he began to write after her death, may be a confession of both guilt and love.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ravel's Piano Trio in A Minor - La Jolla Music Society SummerFest\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xFfoTqQbjA4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><p>It would be a sort of betrayal to see it that way, however. Maurice Ravel devoted his whole career to creating music from which the self was excluded. He was no self-revealing <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/robert-schumann\">Schumann<\/a><\/strong> or <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/leos-janacek\">Jan\u00e1\u010dek<\/a><\/strong>. He would deny his own inclinations, as he did when he suppressed his innate \u2018pudeur\u2019 (prudity) to create the erotic atmosphere of <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/ravels-daphnis-et-chloe-guide-and-best-recordings\">Daphnis et Chlo\u00e9<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. <\/p><p>The thought that any sign of dementia had intruded on his work would have horrified him. Happily, it never did. Or as a musically aware neurologist recently said of the Piano Concerto in G: \u2018If that was the product of a sick brain there should be more of that sickness in the world\u2019.<\/p><p><em>Gerald Larner<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Sunday, 27 October 2024 at 17:08 PM \u2018My only mistress is music.\u2019 This famous declaration, by composer Maurice Ravel, of absolute fidelity to his art tells you much of what you need to know about this inimitable composer, whom Stravinsky famously called ‘the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers’, a reference to the incredible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":49066,"template":"","categories":[1,17],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/maurice-ravel-the-most-perfect-of-swiss-watchmakers.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Published: Sunday, 27 October 2024 at 17:08 PM \u2018My only mistress is music.\u2019 This famous declaration, by composer Maurice Ravel, of absolute fidelity to his art tells you much of what you need to know about this inimitable composer, whom Stravinsky famously called ‘the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers’, a reference to the incredible…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/49065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}