An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within museums, galleries and exhibition halls, and World's Fairs. Exhibitions include [whatever as in major art museums and small art galleries; interpretive exhibitions, as at natural history museums and history museums], for example; and commercial exhibitions, or trade fairs.

The word "exhibition" is usually, but not always, the word used for a collection of items. Sometimes "exhibit" is synonymous with "exhibition", but "exhibit" generally refers to a single item being exhibited within an exhibition.

Exhibitions may be permanent displays or temporary, but in common usage, "exhibitions" are considered temporary and usually scheduled to open and close on specific dates. While many exhibitions are shown in just one venue, some exhibitions are shown in multiple locations and are called travelling exhibitions, and some are online exhibitions.

Though exhibitions are common events, the concept of an exhibition is quite wide and encompasses many variables. Exhibitions range from an extraordinarily large event such as a World's Fair exposition to small one-artist solo shows or a display of just one item. Curators are sometimes involved as the people who select the items in an exhibition. Writers and editors are sometimes needed to write text, labels and accompanying printed material such as catalogs and books. Architects, exhibition designers, graphic designers and other designers may be needed to shape the exhibition space and give form to the editorial content. Exhibition also means a scholarship.

Art exhibitions[link]

Fine art exhibited at Tate Modern.

Art exhibitions include an array of artifacts from countless forms of human making: paintings, drawings, crafts, sculpture, video installations, sound installations, performances, interactive art, etc. Art exhibitions may focus on one artist, one group, one genre, one theme or one collection; or may be organized by curators, selected by juries, or show any artwork submitted.

Fine arts exhibitions typically highlight works of art with generous space and lighting, supplying information through labels or audioguides designed to be unobtrusive to the art itself.

Exhibitions may occur in series or periodically, as in the case with Biennales, triennials and quadrennials.

Interpretive exhibitions[link]

Fossil skeletons at the American Museum of Natural History.

Interpretive exhibitions are exhibitions that require more context to explain the items being displayed. This is generally true of exhibitions devoted to scientific and historical themes, where text, dioramas, charts, maps and interactive displays may provide necessary explanation of background and concepts. Interpretive exhibitions generally require more text and more graphics than fine art exhibitions do.

The topics of interpretive graphics cover a wide range including archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, history, science, technology and natural history. Examples of such exhibitions may be found at the Natural History Museum, museums of the Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum — to name a few of the largest museums of this kind.

Commercial exhibitions[link]

Vehicles exhibited at the Tokyo Motor Show 2007

Commercial exhibitions, generally called trade fairs, trade shows or expos, are usually organized so that organizations in a specific interest or industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products, service, study activities of rivals and examine recent trends and opportunities. Some trade fairs are open to the public, while others can only be attended by company representatives (members of the trade) and members of the press.

Exhibitions as marketing tools[link]

Throughout the ages, trade fairs have been recognized as one of the most efficient and powerful tools for effectively doing business. As a face-to-face meeting point, fairs and exhibitions are basically a target opportunity for achieving your trade objectives. They are a cost-effective means to reach your market audience - in one time and in one place. Among the key advantages of trade show participation is:

Customer contact: Trade shows provide excellent venues for initiating contacts with new customers and developing new trade leads. Equally important they enable you to maintain and renew contacts with valued clients.

Product and Service Launch Platforms: Live presentations and Demonstrations of your products and services speak for themselves, accelerating the selling process and generating new sales.

Marketing Communications: Trade fairs focus media attention on your Company and products. Public relations efforts can be focused to raise the profile of your company image and brands.

A high return/expense ratio: Trade shows are known to have a high return/expense ratio. An EEAA (Exhibition Association of Australia) survey showed that an average expenditure of 9% of companies' marketing budgets in trade far events resulted in a return of 23% of business.

CEIR (centre of exhibition industry researches): - 76% of exhibition attendees arrive with an agenda; - 48% of exhibition leads don't require a sales call to close the deal; - Exhibition leads cost 56% less to close than field sales calls; - 87% of exhibition attendees say they will share information obtained at exhibitions with their immediate superiors.

See also[link]

• Exhibition history
• Online exhibition

Marc Jacobs
Born	(1963-04-09) April 9, 1963 (age 49) New York City, New York, U.S.
Residence	Paris, France
Nationality	American
Education	High School of Art and Design Parsons The New School for Design
Occupation	Fashion designer
Awards	Chevaliers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Labels	Marc Jacobs Marc by Marc Jacobs Louis Vuitton

Marc Jacobs (born April 9, 1963) is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for Marc Jacobs, as well as Marc by Marc Jacobs,^[1] a diffusion line, with more than 200 retail stores in 80 countries.^[2] He has been the creative director of the French design house Louis Vuitton since 1997. Jacobs is on Time Magazine's "2010 Time 100" list of the 100 most influential people in the world,^[3] and ranked 12th on Out Magazine's 2011 list of "50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America".^[4]

Early life and education[link]

Marc Jacobs was born to a non-observant Jewish family in New York City. When he was seven, his father, an agent at the William Morris agency, died. His mother, who remarried three times, , was “mentally ill” and “didn’t really take care of her kids”, according to Jacobs.^[5] As a teenager, he went to live with his paternal grandmother on the Upper West Side, in an apartment in the Majestic on Central Park West.^[6]

He graduated from the High School of Art and Design in 1981 and studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York. During his time at Parsons, Jacobs won the Perry Ellis Gold Thimble Award in 1984, and in the same year was also awarded the Chester Weinberg Gold Thimble Award and the Design Student of the Year Award.^[7]

Career[link]

At age fifteen, Jacobs worked as a stockboy at Charivari, a now-defunct avant-garde clothing boutique in New York City.^[8] While still at Parsons, Jacobs designed and sold his first line of hand-knit sweaters. He also designed his first collection for Reuben Thomas, Inc., under the Sketchbook label.

With Robert Duffy, Jacobs' creative collaborator, and business partner since the mid-1980s, he formed Jacobs Duffy Designs Inc., which continues to this day. In a 2008 interview for 032c, Duffy indicated that he remains Jacobs's best friend and confidant.^[9]

In 1986, backed by Onward Kashiyama USA, Inc., Jacobs designed his first collection bearing the Marc Jacobs label. In 1987, Jacobs was the youngest designer to have ever been awarded the fashion industry's highest tribute, the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Perry Ellis Award for "New Fashion Talent".^[10]

In 1988, Jacobs and Duffy joined the women's design unit of Perry Ellis after its founder, Perry Ellis, had died as vice president and president, respectively. In addition, Jacobs oversaw the design of the various women's licensees. In 1992, the Council of Fashion Designers of America awarded Jacobs with The Women's Designer of the Year Award. In the same year, he designed a "grunge" collection for Perry Ellis, leading to his dismissal.^[11]

In the fall of 1993, Jacobs Duffy Designs Inc. launched their own licensing and design company: Marc Jacobs International Company, L.P.^[10]

In 1994, Jacobs produced his first full collection of menswear.^{[citation needed]}

In 1997, Jacobs was appointed Louis Vuitton's creative director, where he created the company's first ready-to-wear clothing line.^[11] Jacobs has collaborated with many popular artists for his Louis Vuitton collections, including Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami and most recently American artist Richard Prince and rapper Kanye West,^[12]

In the spring of 2001, Jacobs introduced his secondary line, Marc by Marc Jacobs.^[8] In 2006, Jacobs started a new line of body-splash fragrances in affordable huge ten-ounce bottles which are distributed by Coty. First only being sold in perfume boutiques, they have become more and more popular during the recent years.

In 2007 filmmaker Loïc Prigent released a documentary film about Jacobs entitled Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton.^[13]

In February 2008, Jacobs was accused of plagiarizing a scarf design created in the 1950s by Swedish designer Gösta Olofsson.^[14] Jacobs settled the matter by offering monetary compensation to Olofsson’s son.^[15]

In 2009, Jacobs launched a shirt, sold at his stores,^[16] demanding the legalization of gay marriage.

In May 2009, Jacobs co-hosted, with fashion model Kate Moss, a "model and muse"-themed gala for the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.

In February 2010, Jacobs sued Ed Hardy for infringing on the designs of one of his embroidered handbags.^[17]

In the course of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin in July 2011 Jacobs was the patron of the young talent award “Designer for Tomorrow by Peek & Cloppenburg”. The five finalists were selected by Jacob and the juryboard and received a personal coaching by Jacobs. The juryboard and Jacobs appointed the winner of 2011 during the DfT award show.^{[citation needed]}

In August 2011, it was reported that Jacobs may succeed John Galliano as creative director of Christian Dior.^[18]

Jacobs is a prominent fixture in the New York City celebrity scene, having become something of a celebrity himself. The audience for his fashion shows typically includes celebrities like Kim Gordon and Vincent Gallo.^[19] Most of his collections make references to the fashions of past decades from the 1940s to the 1980s. Disputing the claim by the designer Oscar de la Renta that Jacobs is a mere copyist, Guy Trebay, a critic for The New York Times, has written "unlike the many brand-name designers who promote the illusion that their output results from a single prodigious creativity, Mr. Jacobs makes no pretense that fashion emerges full blown from the head of one solitary genius".^[20] Explaining his clothes, Jacobs has said "what I prefer is that even if someone feels hedonistic, they don't look it. Curiosity about sex is much more interesting to me than domination. ... My clothes are not hot. Never. Never."^[6]

Awards[link]

Council of Fashion Designers:

• Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award, 2011
• Womenswear Designer of the Year, 2010
• Accessory Designer of the Year, 2005
• Accessory Designer of the Year, 2003
• Menswear Designer of the Year, 2002
• Accessory Designer of the Year, 1999
• Accessory Designer of the Year, 1998
• Womenswear Designer of the Year, 1997
• Womenswear Designer of the Year, 1992

Eponymous company[link]

In summer 2011, there were 239 Marc Jacobs retail stores in 60 countries.^[21] Some of them present only a certain portion of the company's several brands (The Marc Jacobs Collection, Marc by Marc Jacobs, and Little Marc, a children's line). The various ready-to-wear and accessory collections are also widely available at department stores around the globe.

As of May 2008, Marc Jacobs boutiques were located in dozens of cities throughout the world.

Personal life[link]

Jacobs, who is openly gay was in a four-year relationship with salesman Jason Preston and was in a relationship with advertising executive Lorenzo Martone. In March 2009, Women's Wear Daily reported that the pair was engaged after a year of dating.^[22] Several reports that they got married were later denied.^[23] On July 24, 2010, Martone announced via Twitter that he and Jacobs had not been together for two months.^[24]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Fashion portal

• List of fashion designers
• List of people from New York City

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Grigoriadis, Vanessa (November 27, 2008). "The Deep Shallowness of Marc Jacobs". Rolling Stone. http://www.vanessagrigoriadis.com/jacobs.html. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Marc Jacobs

• marcjacobs.com, company's official website
• Marc Jacobs on Fashion Net
• Marc Jacobs - designer profile at ChoosyStyle
• Marc Jacobs launches E-commerce Playhouse
• DfT hosted by Marc Jacobs

Ronald "Ron" Mueck (English pronunciation: /mjuːɛk/ or /muːɪk/; born 1958, Melbourne) is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in the United Kingdom.

Early work[link]

Ron Mueck began his career working on the Australian children's television program Shirl's Neighbourhood. He was the creative director and made, voiced and operated the puppets Greenfinger the Garden Gnome, Ol' Possum, Stanley the snake and Claude the Crow amongst many others. The show was made for Channel 7 Melbourne between 1979 and 1984, broadcast nationally and starred the ex-lead singer of Skyhooks, Graeme "Shirley" Strachan.

Mueck's early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for children's television and films, notably the film Labyrinth for which he also contributed the voice of Ludo, and the Jim Henson series The Storyteller.

Mueck moved on to establish his own company in London, making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. Although highly detailed, these props were usually designed to be photographed from one specific angle hiding the mess of construction seen from the other side. Mueck increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all angles.

Sculptor[link]

In 1996 Mueck transitioned to fine art, collaborating with his mother-in-law, Paula Rego, to produce small figures as part of a tableau she was showing at the Hayward Gallery. Rego introduced him to Charles Saatchi who was immediately impressed and started to collect and commission work. This led to the piece which made Mueck's name, Dead Dad, being included in the Sensation show at the Royal Academy the following year. Dead Dad is a silicone and mixed media sculpture of the corpse of Mueck's father reduced to about two thirds of its natural scale. It is the only work of Mueck's that uses his own hair for the finished product.

Mueck's sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images. His five metre high sculpture Boy 1999 was a feature in the Millennium Dome and later exhibited in the Venice Biennale. Today it sits as the centerpiece in the foyer off the Danish Contemporary Art Museum ARoS in Aarhus.

In 1999 Mueck was appointed as Associate Artist at the National Gallery, London. During this two-year post he created the works Mother and Child, Pregnant Woman, Man in a Boat, and Swadled Baby.^[1]

In 2002 his sculpture Pregnant Woman^[2] was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$800,000.

Exhibitions[link]

Ron Mueck's first exhibition in Japan opened on 26 April 2009 at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. It ran until 8 August and featured a collection of works displayed over six spaces in the gallery. Among them were Mueck's latest work, "A Girl". The exhibition also included two short films about the artist, covering both his artistic background and his production techniques.

An exhibition was held at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, from 12 December 2007 through 30 March 2008. "Ron Mueck at The Andy Warhol Museum" featured seven of the artist’s realistic human sculptures, including: In Bed; A Girl; Wild Man; Spooning Couple; Man in a Boat; Mask II; and Mask III.

A major exhibition of his work was shown as part of the Edinburgh Festival at the Royal Scottish Academy Building until 1 October 2006.^[3] A solo exhibition of nine works by Ron Mueck was presented at the Brooklyn Museum from 3 November 2006 through 4 February 2007.^[4]

An exhibit of his work was also on view at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa from 2 March to 6 May 2007, organized by the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain (Paris), in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada, the Brooklyn Museum and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, showed an exhibition of thirteen of Mueck's pieces from 24 June 2007, through 21 October 2007. The works in the show include Untitled (Seated Woman) (1999), Dead Dad (1996–97), In Bed (2005), Untitled (Big Man) (2000), Two Women (2005), Crouching Boy in Mirror (1999–2000), Spooning Couple (2005), Mask II (2001–2002), Mask III (2005), Wild Man (2005), and A Girl (2006).^[5]

A major retrospective of Mueck's work was held in his home town of Melbourne, Australia, in April 2010, at the National Gallery of Victoria.

The Christchurch Art Gallery is hosting a touring version of the National Gallery of Victoria's exhibition 2 October 2010 to 23 January 2011.^[6] The antique College of San Ildefonso Mexico 2011

[edit] Chronological list of works^[7]

• Big Baby (1996), silicone, polyurethane, wood, synthetic hair. 85-cm-high model of baby with oversize eyes. (Private collection).
• Mongrel (1996), polyester resin, fiberglass, synthetic fur. Life-sized mongrel dog.(Collection of Sheilagh Tennant, Edinburgh).
• Pinocchio (1996), mixed media - standing boy, perhaps 5 years of age, wearing only underpants. (John and Amy Phelan Collection, New York).
• Dead Dad (1996–97), silicone, acrylic paint and human hair - a 2/3-life-sized sculpture of Mueck's father lying on his back, naked. (Stefan T. Edlis Collection, Chicago).
• Angel (1997), mixed media - a 1/3-scale boy seated on a tall stool, in a brooding pose looking down, sprouting wings made of real goose feathers. (Hoffman Collection, Dallas)
• Big Baby II (1997), polyester resin, fiberglass, silicone, synthetic hair. 85 cm-high model of baby. (Caldic Collectie, Rotterdam).
• Big Baby III (1997), polyester resin, fiberglass, silicone, synthetic hair, cotton. 85 cm-high model of baby. (Stefan T. Edlis Collection, Chicago).
• Man in a Sheet (1997), polyester resin, fiberglass, silicone, polyurethane, aluminum wire, synthetic hair, cotton. Man wrapped in a sheet, bending forward to gaze at floor. (Olbricht Collection, Germany).
• Mask (Self Portrait)(1997) - eight-foot reproduction of Mueck's own face, frowning. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill. Residing in the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
• Ghost (1998), mixed media - 2 metres tall (3/2 scale?) adolescent girl, in swimming costume, leaning against a wall, face averted. (Tate Gallery)
• Man under Cardigan (1998), silicone, polyurethane, polyester resin, aluminum wire, wool. Naked man, sitting on floor, a woollen cardigan held over his head as if to shelter from rain. (Vicki and Kent Logan Collection).
• Shaved Head (1998), mixed media. Naked man, squatting, arms stretched out, head turned downwards. (Hoffman Collection, Berlin).
• Boy (2000), fibreglass, resin, silicone - a 5-metre-tall sculpture of a boy, crouching. First shown in the UK Millennium Dome exhibition. It is now owned by the art museum ARoS in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, who use it as a trademark piece.
• Seated Woman (1999), mixed media - 1/2 scale clothed, seated, elderly woman, hands clasped, eyes almost closed - (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth).
• Crouching Boy in Mirror (1999–2002), mixed media. Figure similar to the Millennium Boy, above, but on a much smaller scale, examining his reflection in a mirror. (The Broad art Foundation, Santa Monica).
• Baby (2000), mixed media - tiny naked newborn baby boy, arms akimbo.(Keith and Kathy Sachs).
• Untitled (Big Man) (2000) - a nearly seven-foot sculpture of a naked, completely hairless, belligerent-looking man sitting with his knees drawn up and his elbows resting on his knees, his head in his hand. The work is designed to sit in a corner. Owned by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., it has become one of the museum's most popular works since its acquisition.
• Man in Blankets (2000), mixed media - 1/2 scale - elderly naked man almost completely enveloped in blankets, which form a kind of cocoon. (Hoffman Collection, Dallas). Artist's proof is owned by Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.
• Old Woman in Bed (2000), mixed media - 1/2 scale - very elderly or dying woman lying in bed, draped in blankets, asleep. (Anthony d'Offay).
• Standing Man (2000), mixed media. Middle-aged or elderly man dressed in gown and duffle coat. (Private collection, Milan).
• Mask II (2001-2), mixed media. Huge head (the face appears to be Mueck's own), lying on its side as if asleep - private collection.
• Mother and Child (2002), fibreglass, resin, silicone - 1/2 scale naked woman who has just given birth, the baby laid on her stomach with umbilical cord still attached and trailing to the woman's womb. (Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich).
• Man in a Boat (2002), mixed media - 1/3 scale naked man seated toward the prow of a 4-metre-long rowing boat. (Private collection).
• Pregnant Woman (2002), fibreglass, resin, silicone - 2.5-metres tall sculpture of a naked pregnant woman clasping her hands above her head. (National Gallery of Australia).
• Swaddled Baby (2002), mixed media - life-sized new-born baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, head on a pillow.
• Head of a Baby (2003), mixed media. Huge head of a baby. (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa).
• Baby on a Chair (2004), mixed media. Baby wrapped in blanket, placed on a wooden chair. (Collection Glenn Fuhrmann, New York).
• In Bed (2005). Huge (3 x scale?) woman lying in bed, hand raised to her face in a contemplative pose. (Queensland Gallery of Modern Art).
• Mask III (2005), mixed media. Huge (1.5 metre tall) face of a black woman. (Anthony d'Offay).
• Spooning Couple (2005), mixed media. 1/2 scale of partially clothed middle-aged man and woman lying in 'spooning' position as if in bed - artist's collection.
• Two Women (2005), mixed media. Two diminutive, clothed, elderly women, standing as though gossiping. (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia).
• Wild Man (2005), mixed media. A nine-foot sculpture of a naked, bearded, fearful man clutching the stool he is seated on. (McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, Victoria, Australia).
• A Girl (2006), mixed media. Newborn baby, with part of umbilical cord and some blood. (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa).
• Standing Woman (2007), mixed media. Huge (4-meter high) middle-aged woman, dressed in black. (Towada Arts Center, Towada City, Japan).
• Woman with Sticks (2008), mixed media. 180 cm-high model of naked woman, bent backwards, carrying huge bundle of sticks. (Private collection).

• Drift (2009), mixed media. 2/3-scale man floating on his back on inflatable raft, wearing sunglasses and swimming trunks. (Anthony d'Offay).
• Still Life (2009), mixed media. Slaughtered and plucked chicken, same size as a human being, hung from hook by its feet. (Anthony d'Offay).
• Youth (2009), mixed media. Diminutive figure (65 cm high) of black youth, holding up his T-shirt to examine a wound in his belly. (Anthony d'Offay).

See also[link]

• Duane Hanson
• George Segal
• John De Andrea
• Patricia Piccinini (similar artist)
• Roman sculpture (historical connection)

Notes[link]

1. ^ Greeves, Susanna; Colin Wiggins (2003). Ron Mueck. London: National Gallery Company. pp. 23–41. ISBN 1-85709-167-1. 
2. ^ http://www.nga.gov.au/NewAcquisitions/2003/mueck.htm
3. ^ National Galleries of Scotland - Whatson
4. ^ Brooklyn Museum: Ron Mueck
5. ^ Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
6. ^ Christchurch Art Gallery | Exhibitions | Ron Mueck
7. ^ Hurlston, David; et al (2010). Ron Mueck (Exhibition Catalog). Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria. 

External links[link]

• Muecks' studio and work in progress
• Sculpture Magazine article
• 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa Japan
• Ron Mueck at the Internet Movie Database
• Ron Mueck at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain (Paris)
• Ron Mueck Muppet Wiki
• Examples of work at the James Cohan Gallery
• Pregnant Woman at the National Gallery of Australia
• Washington Post gallery
• At the National Gallery of Scotland, 2006
• Article on Ron Mueck in The Guardian
• Solo Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
• Details of the exhibition run by English Heritage at Belsay Hall, Northumberland
• Ukiran Hidup Ron Mueck

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, 1870

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Моде́ст Петро́вич Мýсoргский; IPA: [mɐˈdʲest ˈmusərkskʲɪj]; 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.

Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.

For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have recently come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available.

Name[link]

The spelling and pronunciation of the composer's name has been a matter of some controversy.

The family name is derived from a 15th or 16th century ancestor, Roman Vasilyevich Monastïryov, who was mentioned in the Velvet Book, the 16th century genealogy of Russian boyars. Roman Vasilyevich bore the nickname "Musorga", and was the grandfather of the first 'Mussorgsky'. The composer is of the lineage of Ryurik, the legendary founder of the Russian state.^[1]

In Mussorgsky family documents, the spelling of the name varies: 'Musarsky', 'Musersky', 'Muserskoy', 'Musirskoy', 'Musorsky', and 'Musursky'. According to his baptismal record the composer's name is 'Musersky'.^[2]

In early (up to 1858) letters to Miliy Balakirev, the composer signed his name 'Musorsky' (Russian: Мусoрский, Musorskiy).^[3] The 'g' made its first appearance in a letter to Balakirev in 1863.^[4] Mussorgsky used this new spelling (Russian: Мусoргский, Musorgskiy) to the end of his life, but occasionally reverted to the earlier 'Musorsky'.^[5][6] The addition of the 'g' to the name was likely initiated by the composer's elder brother Filaret to obscure the resemblance of the name's root to an unsavory Russian word:^[7]

мýсoр (músor) — n. m. debris, rubbish, refuse^[8]

Mussorgsky apparently did not take the new spelling seriously, and played on the 'rubbish' connection in letters to Vladimir Stasov and Stasov's family, routinely signing his name 'Musoryanin', or 'garbage-dweller' (cf. dvoryanin: 'nobleman').^[9]

The Western convention of doubling the first 's', which is not observed in scholarly literature (e.g. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians), likely arose because in many Western European languages a single intervocalic 's' often becomes voiced to 'z' (e.g. 'music'), unlike Slavic languages where it remains unvoiced.

The first syllable of the name originally received the stress (i.e. 'MÚS-ər-ski'), and does so to this day in Russia and in the composer's home district. The mutability of the second-syllable vowel in the versions of the name recorded by the family documents mentioned above is evidence that this syllable did not receive the stress.^[10]

The addition of the 'g' and the accompanying shift in stress to the second syllable (i.e. 'Mu-SÓRK-ski'), sometimes described as a Polish variant, was supported by Filaret Mussorgsky's descendants until his line was extinguished in the 20th century. Their example was followed by many influential Russians, such as Fyodor Shalyapin, Nikolay Golovanov, and Tikhon Khrennikov, who, perhaps dismayed that the great composer's name was "reminiscent of garbage", supported the erroneous second-syllable stress that has also become entrenched in the West.^[11]

Life[link]

Early years[link]

Mussorgsky was born in Karevo, Toropets, Pskov region, Imperial Russia, 400 km (250 mi) south of Saint Petersburg. His wealthy and land-owning family, the noble family of Mussorgsky, is reputedly descended from the first Ruthenian ruler, Rurik, through the sovereign princes of Smolensk. At age six Mussorgsky began receiving piano lessons from his mother, herself a trained pianist. His progress was sufficiently rapid that three years later he was able to perform a John Field concerto and works by Franz Liszt for family and friends. At 10, he and his brother were taken to Saint Petersburg to study at the elite Peterschule (St. Peter's School). While there, Modest studied the piano with the noted Anton Gerke. In 1852, the 12-year-old Mussorgsky published a piano piece titled "Porte-enseigne Polka" at his father's expense.

Mussorgsky's parents planned the move to Saint Petersburg so that both their sons would renew the family tradition of military service.^[12] To this end, Mussorgsky entered the Cadet School of the Guards at age 13. Sharp controversy had arisen over the educational attitudes at the time of both this institute and its director, a General Sutgof.^[13] All agreed the Cadet School could be a brutal place, especially for new recruits.^[14] More tellingly for Mussorgsky, it was likely where he began his eventual path to alcoholism.^[14] According to a former student, singer and composer Nikolai Kompaneisky, Sutgof "was proud when a cadet returned from leave drunk with champagne."^[15]

Music remained important to him, however. Sutgof's daughter was also a pupil of Herke, and Mussorgsky was allowed to attend lessons with her.^[13] His skills as a pianist made him much in demand by fellow-cadets; for them he would play dances interspersed with his own improvisations.^[16] In 1856 Mussorgsky – who had developed a strong interest in history and studied German philosophy – successfully graduated from the Cadet School. Following family tradition he received a commission with the Preobrazhensky Regiment, the foremost regiment of the Russian Imperial Guard.^[16]

Maturity[link]

In October 1856 the 17-year-old Mussorgsky met the 22-year-old Alexander Borodin while both men served at a military hospital in Saint Petersburg. The two were soon on good terms.^[17] Borodin later remembered,

His little uniform was spic and span, close-fitting, his feet turned outwards, his hair smoothed down and greased, his nails perfectly cut, his hands well groomed like a lord's. His manners were elegant, aristocratic: his speech likewise, delivered through somewhat clenched teeth, interspersed with French phrases, rather precious. There was a touch—though very moderate—of foppishness. His politeness and good manners were exceptional. The ladies made a fuss of him. He sat at the piano and, throwing up his hands coquettishly, played with extreme sweetness and grace (etc) extracts from Trovatore, Traviata, and so on, and around him buzzed in chorus: "Charmant, délicieux!" and suchlike. I met Modest Petrovich three or four times at Popov's in this way, both on duty and at the hospital."^[18]

Alexander Dargomyzhsky

More portentous was Mussorgsky's introduction that winter to Alexander Dargomyzhsky, at that time the most important Russian composer after Mikhail Glinka. Dargomyzhsky was impressed with Mussorgsky's pianism. As a result, Mussorgsky became a fixture at Dargomyzhsky's soirées. There, critic Vladimir Stasov later recalled, he began "his true musical life."^[19]

Over the next two years at Dargomyzhsky's, Mussorgsky met several figures of importance in Russia's cultural life, among them Stasov, César Cui (a fellow officer), and Mily Balakirev. Balakirev had an especially strong impact. Within days he took it upon himself to help shape Mussorgsky's fate as a composer. He recalled to Stasov, "Because I am not a theorist, I could not teach him harmony (as, for instance Rimsky-Korsakov now teaches it) ... [but] I explained to him the form of compositions, and to do this we played through both Beethoven symphonies [as piano duets] and much else (Schumann, Schubert, Glinka, and others), analyzing the form."^[20] Up to this point Mussorgsky had known nothing but piano music; his knowledge of more radical recent music was virtually non-existent. Balakirev started filling these gaps in Mussorgsky's knowledge.^[21]

In 1858, within a few months of beginning his studies with Balakirev, Mussorgsky resigned his commission to devote himself entirely to music.^[22] He also suffered a painful crisis at this time. This may have had a spiritual component (in a letter to Balakirev the young man referred to "mysticism and cynical thoughts about the Deity"), but its exact nature will probably never be known. In 1859, the 20-year-old gained valuable theatrical experience by assisting in a production of Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar on the Glebovo estate of a former singer and her wealthy husband; he also met Anatoly Lyadov and enjoyed a formative visit to Moscow – after which he professed a love of "everything Russian".

In spite of this epiphany, Mussorgsky's music still leaned more toward foreign models; a four-hand piano sonata which he produced in 1860 contains his only movement in sonata form. Nor is any 'nationalistic' impulse easily discernible in the incidental music for Serov's play Oedipus in Athens, on which he worked between the ages of 19 and 22 (and then abandoned unfinished), or in the Intermezzo in modo classico for piano solo (revised and orchestrated in 1867). The latter was the only important piece he composed between December 1860 and August 1863: the reasons for this probably lie in the painful re-emergence of his subjective crisis in 1860 and the purely objective difficulties which resulted from the emancipation of the serfs the following year – as a result of which the family was deprived of half its estate, and Mussorgsky had to spend a good deal of time in Karevo unsuccessfully attempting to stave off their looming impoverishment.

Gustave Flaubert. Mussorgsky started an opera based on his Salammbô but did not finish it.

By this time, Mussorgsky had freed himself from the influence of Balakirev and was largely teaching himself. In 1863 he began an opera – Salammbô – on which he worked between 1863 and 1866 before losing interest in the project. During this period he had returned to Saint Petersburg and was supporting himself as a low-grade civil-servant while living in a six-man "commune". In a heady artistic and intellectual atmosphere, he read and discussed a wide range of modern artistic and scientific ideas – including those of the provocative writer Chernyshevsky, known for the bold assertion that, in art, "form and content are opposites". Under such influences he came more and more to embrace the ideal of artistic realism and all that it entailed, whether this concerned the responsibility to depict life "as it is truly lived"; the preoccupation with the lower strata of society; or the rejection of repeating, symmetrical musical forms as insufficiently true to the unrepeating, unpredictable course of "real life".

	Night on Bald Mountain Performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra. Courtesy of Musopen
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"Real life" affected Mussorgsky painfully in 1865, when his mother died; it was at this point that the composer had his first serious bout of either alcoholism or dipsomania. The 26-year-old was, however, on the point of writing his first realistic songs (including "Hopak" and "Darling Savishna", both of them composed in 1866 and among his first "real" publications the following year). 1867 was also the year in which he finished the original orchestral version of his Night on Bald Mountain (which, however, Balakirev criticised and refused to conduct, with the result that it was never performed during Mussorgsky's lifetime).

Peak[link]

Mussorgsky's career as a civil servant was by no means stable or secure: though he was assigned to various posts and even received a promotion in these early years, in 1867 he was declared 'supernumerary' – remaining 'in service', but receiving no wages. Decisive developments were occurring in his artistic life, however. Although it was in 1867 that Stasov first referred to the 'kuchka' ('The Five') of Russian composers loosely grouped around Balakirev, Mussorgsky was by then ceasing to seek Balakirev's approval and was moving closer to the older Alexander Dargomyzhsky .

Ivan Melnikov as the title character in Boris Godunov, 1874

Since 1866 Dargomïzhsky had been working on his opera The Stone Guest, a version of the Don Juan story with a Pushkin text that he declared would be set "just as it stands, so that the inner truth of the text should not be distorted", and in a manner that abolished the 'unrealistic' division between aria and recitative in favour of a continuous mode of syllabic but lyrically heightened declamation somewhere between the two.

Under the influence of this work (and the ideas of Georg Gottfried Gervinus, according to whom "the highest natural object of musical imitation is emotion, and the method of imitating emotion is to mimic speech"), Mussorgsky in 1868 rapidly set the first eleven scenes of Nikolai Gogol's The Marriage (Zhenitba), with his priority being to render into music the natural accents and patterns of the play's naturalistic and deliberately humdrum dialogue. This work marked an extreme position in Mussorgsky's pursuit of naturalistic word-setting: he abandoned it unorchestrated after reaching the end of his 'Act 1', and though its characteristically 'Mussorgskyian' declamation is to be heard in all his later vocal music, the naturalistic mode of vocal writing more and more became merely one expressive element among many.

Fyodor Komissarzhevsky as The Pretender in Boris Godunov

A few months after abandoning Zhenitba, the 29-year-old Mussorgsky was encouraged to write an opera on the story of Boris Godunov. This he did, assembling and shaping a text from Pushkin's play and Karamzin's history. He completed the large-scale score the following year while living with friends and working for the Forestry Department. In 1871, however, the finished opera was rejected for theatrical performance, apparently because of its lack of any 'prima donna' role. Mussorgsky set to work producing a revised and enlarged 'second version'. During the next year, which he spent sharing rooms with Rimsky-Korsakov, he made changes that went beyond those requested by the theatre. In this version the opera was accepted, probably in May 1872, and three excerpts were staged at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1873. It is often asserted that in 1872 the opera was rejected a second time, but no specific evidence for this exists.

By the time of the first production of Boris Godunov in February 1874, Mussorgsky had taken part in the ill-fated Mlada project (in the course of which he had made a choral version of his Night on Bald Mountain) and had begun Khovanshchina. Though far from being a critical success – and in spite of receiving only a dozen or so performances – the popular reaction in favour of Boris made this the peak of Mussorgsky's career.

Decline[link]

From this peak a pattern of decline becomes increasingly apparent. Already the Balakirev circle was disintegrating. Mussorgsky was especially bitter about this. He wrote to Vladimir Stasov, "[T]he mighty Koocha has degenerated into soulless traitors."^[23] In drifting away from his old friends, Mussorgsky had been seen to fall victim to 'fits of madness' that could well have been alcoholism-related. His friend Viktor Hartmann had died, and his relative and recent roommate Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov (who furnished the poems for the song-cycle Sunless and would go on to provide those for the Songs and Dances of Death) had moved away to get married.

Detail from Ilya Repin's celebrated portrait of Mussorgsky, painted 2–5 March 1881, only a few days before the composer's death.

While alcoholism was Mussorgsky's personal weakness, it was also a behavior pattern considered typical for those of Mussorgsky's generation who wanted to oppose the establishment and protest through extreme forms of behavior.^[24] One contemporary notes, "an intense worship of Bacchus was considered to be almost obligatory for a writer of that period. It was a showing off, a 'pose,' for the best people of the [eighteen-]sixties." Another writes, "Talented people in Russia who love the simple folk cannot but drink."^[25] Mussorgsky spent day and night in a Saint Petersburg tavern of low repute, the Maly Yaroslavets, accompanied by other bohemian dropouts. He and his fellow drinkers idealized their alcoholism, perhaps seeing it as ethical and aesthetic opposition. This bravado, however, led to little more than isolation and eventual self-destruction.^[24]

	Pictures at an Exhibition (first part of three) Pictures at an Exhibition (second part of three) Pictures at an Exhibition (third part of three) Arrangement for two pianos
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For a time Mussorgsky was able to maintain his creative output: his compositions from 1874 include Sunless, the Khovanschina Prelude, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (in memory of Hartmann); he also began work on another opera based on Gogol, The Fair at Sorochyntsi (for which he produced another choral version of Night on Bald Mountain).

Grave of Modest Mussorgsky in the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg

In the years that followed, Mussorgsky's decline became increasingly steep. Although now part of a new circle of eminent personages that included singers, medical men and actors, he was increasingly unable to resist drinking, and a succession of deaths among his closest associates caused him great pain. At times, however, his alcoholism would seem to be in check, and among the most powerful works composed during his last 6 years are the four Songs and Dances of Death. His civil service career was made more precarious by his frequent 'illnesses' and absences, and he was fortunate to obtain a transfer to a post (in the Office of Government Control) where his music-loving superior treated him with great leniency – in 1879 even allowing him to spend 3 months touring 12 cities as a singer's accompanist.

The decline could not be halted, however. In 1880 he was finally dismissed from government service. Aware of his destitution, one group of friends organised a stipend designed to support the completion of Khovanschina; another group organised a similar fund to pay him to complete The Fair at Sorochyntsi. However, neither work was completed (although Khovanschina, in piano score with only two numbers uncomposed, came close to being finished).

In early 1881 a desperate Mussorgsky declared to a friend that there was 'nothing left but begging', and suffered four seizures in rapid succession. Though he found a comfortable room in a good hospital – and for several weeks even appeared to be rallying – the situation was hopeless. Repin painted the famous red-nosed portrait in what were to be the last days of the composer's life: a week after his 42nd birthday, he was dead. He was interred at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg.

Mussorgsky, like others of 'The Five', was perceived as extremist by the Emperor and much of his court. This may have been the reason Tsar Alexander III personally crossed off Boris Godunov from the list of proposed pieces for the Imperial Opera in 1888.^[26]

Works[link]

Mussorgsky's works, while strikingly novel, are stylistically Romantic and draw heavily on Russian musical themes. He has been the inspiration for many Russian composers, including most notably Dmitri Shostakovich (in his late symphonies) and Sergei Prokofiev (in his operas).

In 1868/9 he composed the opera Boris Godunov, about the life of the Russian tsar, but it was rejected by the Mariinsky Opera. Mussorgsky thus edited the work, making a final version in 1874. The early version is considered darker and more concise than the later version, but also more crude. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov re-orchestrated the opera in 1896 and revised it in 1908. The opera has also been revised by other composers, notably Shostakovich, who made two versions, one for film and one for stage.

Khovanshchina, a more obscure opera, was unfinished and unperformed when Mussorgsky died, but it was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and received its premiere in 1886 in Saint Petersburg. This opera, too, was revised by Shostakovich. The Fair at Sorochyntsi, another opera, was left incomplete at his death but a dance excerpt, the Gopak, is frequently performed.

Mussorgsky's most imaginative and frequently performed work is the cycle of piano pieces describing paintings in sound called Pictures at an Exhibition. This composition, best known through an orchestral arrangement by Maurice Ravel, was written in commemoration of his friend, the architect Viktor Hartmann.

One of Mussorgsky's most striking pieces is the single-movement orchestral work Night on Bald Mountain. The work enjoyed broad popular recognition in the 1940s when it was featured, in tandem with Schubert's 'Ave Maria', in the Disney film Fantasia.

Among the composer's other works are a number of songs, including three song cycles: The Nursery (1872), Sunless (1874) and Songs and Dances of Death (1877); plus Mephistopheles' Song of the Flea and many others. Important early recordings of songs by Mussorgsky were made by tenor Vladimir Rosing in the 1920s and 30s.^[27] Other recordings have been made by Boris Christoff between 1951 and 1957 and by Sergei Leiferkus in 1993.^[28]

Portrait gallery[link]

Criticism[link]

Contemporary opinions of Mussorgsky as a composer and person varied from positive to ambiguous to negative. Mussorgsky's eventual supporters, Stasov and Balakirev, initially registered strongly negative impressions of the composer. Stasov wrote Balakirev, in an 1863 letter, "I have no use whatever for Mussorgsky. All in him is flabby and dull. He is, I think, a perfect idiot. Were he left to his own devices and no longer under your strict supervision, he would soon run to seed as all the others have done. There is nothing in him."

Balakirev agreed: "Yes, Mussorgsky is little short of an idiot."

Mixed impressions are recorded by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, colleagues of Mussorgsky who, unlike him, made their living as composers. Both praised his talent while expressing disappointment with his technique. About Mussorgsky's scores Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, "They were very defective, teeming with clumsy, disconnected harmonies, shocking part-writing, amazingly illogical modulations or intolerably long stretches without ever a modulation, and bad scoring. ...what is needed is an edition for practical and artistic purposes, suitable for performances and for those who wish to admire Mussorgsky's genius, not to study his idiosyncrasies and sins against art."

Rimsky-Korsakov's own editions of Mussorgsky's works met with some criticism of their own. Rimsky-Korsakov's student, Anatoly Lyadov, found them to be lacking, writing "It is easy enough to correct Mussorgsky's irregularities. The only trouble is that when this is done, the character and originality of the music are done away with, and the composer's individuality vanishes."

Tchaikovsky, in a letter to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck was also critical of Mussorgsky: "Mussorgsky you very rightly call a hopeless case. In talent he is perhaps superior to all the [other members of The Five], but his nature is narrow-minded, devoid of any urge towards self-perfection, blindly believing in the ridiculous theories of his circle and in his own genius. In addition, he has a certain base side to his nature which likes coarseness, uncouthness, roughness.... He flaunts ... his illiteracy, takes pride in his ignorance, mucks along anyhow, blindly believing in the infallibility of his genius. Yet he has flashes of talent which are, moreover, not devoid of originality."

Not all of the criticism of Mussorgsky was negative. In a letter to Pauline Viardot, Ivan Turgenev recorded his impressions of a concert he attended in which he met Mussorgsky and heard two of his songs and excerpts from Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina):

Today I was invited to have dinner in old Petrov's house: I gave him a copy of your song, which pleased him greatly [...] Petrov still admires you as enthusiastically as in the past. In his drawing-room there's a bust of you, crowned with laurels, which still bears a strong resemblance to you. I also met his wife (the contralto) [Anna Vorobyova-Petrova, who created the role of Vanya in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar]. She is sixty years old... After dinner she sang two quite original and touching romances by Musorgsky (the author of Boris Godunov, who was also present), in a voice that is still young and charming and has a very expressive timbre. She sang them wonderfully! I was moved to tears, I assure you. Then Mussorgsky played for us and sang, with a rather hoarse voice, some excerpts from his opera and the other one that he is composing now – and the music seemed to me very characteristic and interesting, upon my honour! Old Petrov sang the role of the old profligate and vagabond monk [Varlaam's song about Ivan the Terrible] – it was splendid! I am starting to believe that there really is a future in all of this. Outwardly, Mussorgsky reminds one of Glinka – it is just that his nose is all red (unfortunately, he is an alcoholic), he has pale but beautiful eyes, and fine lips which are squeezed into a fat face with flabby cheeks. I liked him: he is very natural and unaffected, and does not put on any airs. He played us the introduction to his second opera [Khovanshchina]. It is a bit Wagnerian, but full of feeling and beautiful. Forward, forward! Russian artists!!

Western perceptions of Mussorgsky changed with the European premiere of Boris Godunov in 1908. Before the premiere, he was regarded as an eccentric in the west. Critic Edward Dannreuther, wrote, in the 1905 edition of The Oxford History of Music, "Mussorgsky, in his vocal efforts, appears wilfully eccentric. His style impresses the Western ear as barbarously ugly."

However, after the premiere, views on Mussorgsky's music changed drastically. Gerald Abraham, a musicologist, and an authority on Mussorgsky: "As a musical translator of words and all that can be expressed in words, of psychological states, and even physical movement, he is unsurpassed; as an absolute musician he was hopelessly limited, with remarkably little ability to construct pure music or even a purely musical texture."

Footnotes[link]

Sources[link]

• Brown, David, Mussorgsky: His Life and Works (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). ISBN 0-19-816587-0.
• Musorgskiy, M., M. P. Musorgskiy: Letters, Gordeyeva, Ye. (editor), 2nd edition, Moscow: Music (publisher), 1984 [Мусоргский, М. П., М. П. Мусоргский: Письма, Гордеева, Е., Москва: Музыка, 1984]
• Smirnitsky, A., Russian-English Dictionary, Moscow: The Russian Language (publisher), 1985 [Смирницкий, А. И., Русско-английский словарь, Москва: Русский язык, 1985]
• Taruskin, R., Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Bouis, Antonina W., Saint Petersburg: A Cultural History. New York: The Free Press, 1995

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Modest Mussorgsky

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Modest Mussorgsky

• Free scores by Mussorgsky at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Modest Mussorgsky in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• The Mutopia Project has compositions by Modest Mussorgsky
• Tableaux d'une exposition Transcription pour contrebasse seule par Mauricio ROMERO
• Turgenev and Mussorgsky (with music samples)
• Sunless score for voice and orchestra, orchestration by Theo Verbey

Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel in 1912
Born	Joseph Maurice Ravel (1875-03-07)March 7, 1875 Ciboure, France
Died	December 28, 1937(1937-12-28) (aged 62) Paris, France
Resting place	Levallois-Perret
Nationality	French
Occupation	Composer
Partner	None
Relatives	Marie Delouart, Joseph Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937) was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music has entered the standard concert repertoire.

Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, including Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, uses a variety of sound and instrumentation.

Ravel is perhaps known best for his orchestral work Boléro (1928), which he considered trivial and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music".^[1]

According to SACEM, Ravel's estate earns more royalties than that of any other French composer. According to the law of most countries (including all members of the World Trade Organization), Ravel's works have been in the public domain since January 1, 2008, in most countries.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Birthplace of Maurice Ravel in Ciboure

Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, close to the border with Spain, in 1875. His mother, Marie Delouart, was of Basque descent and grew up in Madrid, Spain, while his father, Joseph Ravel, was a Swiss inventor and industrialist from French Haute-Savoie.^[2] Both were Catholics and they provided a happy and stimulating household for their children. Some of Joseph's inventions were quite important, including an early internal-combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death", an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a success until a fatal accident at the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1903.^[3] Joseph delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, and he also had a keen interest in music and culture.^[4] Ravel substantiated his father's early influence by stating later, “As a child, I was sensitive to music—to every kind of music.”^[5]

Ravel was very fond of his mother, and her Basque-Spanish heritage was a strong influence on his life and music. Among his earliest memories are folk songs she sang to him.^[6] The family moved to Paris three months after the birth of Maurice, and there his younger brother Édouard was born. Édouard became his father’s favorite and also became an engineer.^[6] At age six, Maurice began piano lessons with Henry Ghys and received his first instruction in harmony, counterpoint, and composition with Charles-René. His earliest public piano recital was in 1889 at age fourteen.^[7]

Though obviously talented at the piano, Ravel demonstrated a preference for composing. He was particularly impressed by the new Russian works conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Exposition Universelle in 1889.^[8] The foreign music at the exhibition also had a great influence on Ravel’s contemporaries Erik Satie, Emmanuel Chabrier, and most significantly Claude Debussy. That year Ravel also met Ricardo Viñes, who would become one of his best friends, one of the foremost interpreters of his piano music, and an important link between Ravel and Spanish music.^[9] The students shared an appreciation for Richard Wagner, the Russian school, and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé.^[10]

The Conservatoire and early career[link]

Théâtre du Conservatoire, Paris: in Ravel's day, home to the Conservatoire de Paris

Ravel’s parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. His teachers included Émile Descombes. He received a first prize in the piano student competition in 1891.^[11] Overall, however, he was not successful academically even as his musicianship matured dramatically. Considered “very gifted”, Ravel was also called “somewhat heedless” in his studies.^[11] Around 1893, Ravel created his earliest compositions, and he was introduced by his father to the café pianist Erik Satie, whose distinctive personality and unorthodox musical experiments proved influential.^[10]

Ravel was not a "bohemian" and evidenced little of the typical trauma of adolescence. At twenty years of age, Ravel was already "self-possessed, a little aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter."^[12] He dressed like a dandy and was meticulous about his appearance and demeanor. Short in stature, light in frame, and bony in features, Ravel had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey".^[13] His large head seemed suitably matched to his great intellect. He was well-read and later accumulated a library of over 1,000 volumes.^[13] In his younger adulthood, Ravel was usually bearded in the fashion of the day, though later he dispensed with all whiskers. Though reserved, Ravel was sensitive and self-critical, and had a mischievous sense of humor.^[12] He became a life-long tobacco smoker in his youth, and he enjoyed strongly flavored meals, fine wine, and spirited conversation.^[14]

After failing to meet the requirement of earning a competitive medal in three consecutive years, Ravel was expelled in 1895. He turned down a music professorship in Tunisia then returned to the Conservatoire in 1898 and started his studies with Gabriel Fauré, determined to focus on composing rather than piano playing.^[15] He studied composition with Fauré until he was dismissed from the class in 1900 for having won neither the fugue nor the composition prize. He remained an auditor with Fauré until he left the Conservatoire in 1903.^[16] Ravel found his teacher’s personality and methods sympathetic and they remained friends and colleagues. He also undertook private studies with André Gedalge, whom he later stated was responsible for "the most valuable elements of my technique."^[17] Ravel studied the ability of each instrument carefully in order to determine the possible effects, and was sensitive to their color and timbre. This may account for his success as an orchestrator and as a transcriber of his own piano works and those of other composers, such as Mussorgsky, Debussy and Schumann.^[18]

His first significant work, Habanera for two pianos, was later transcribed into the well-known third movement of his Rapsodie espagnole, which he dedicated to Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, another of his professors at the Conservatoire. His first published work was Menuet antique, dedicated to and premiered by Viñes.^[19] In 1899, Ravel conducted his first orchestral piece, Shéhérazade, and was greeted by a raucous mixture of boos and applause. Critics termed the piece "a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian School" and called Ravel a “mediocrely gifted debutante ... who will perhaps become something if not someone in about ten years, if he works hard.”^[20] As the most gifted composer of his class and as a leader, with Debussy, of avant-garde French music, Ravel would continue to have a difficult time with the critics for some time to come.^[21]

	Pavane pour une infante défunte noicon Performed by Thérèse Dussaut.
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Around 1900, Ravel joined with a number of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians who were referred to as the Apaches (hooligans), a name coined by Viñes to represent his band of "artistic outcasts".^[22] The group met regularly until the beginning of World War I and the members often inspired each other with intellectual argument and performances of their works before the group. For a time, the influential group included Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla.^[23] One of the first works Ravel performed for the Apaches was Jeux d'eau, his first piano masterpiece and clearly a pathfinding impressionistic work. Viñes performed the public premiere of this piece and Ravel's other early masterpiece Pavane pour une infante défunte in 1902.^[24]

During his years at the Conservatoire, Ravel tried numerous times to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, but to no avail; he was probably considered too radical by the conservatives, including Director Théodore Dubois.^[25] One of Ravel's submitted pieces, the String Quartet in F, probably modeled on Debussy’s Quartet (1893), is now a standard work of chamber music, though at the time it was criticized and found lacking academically.^[26] In 1905, Ravel's final year of eligibility for the Prix de Rome, Ravel did not even pass the preliminary test, despite being favored to win one of the two first prizes available.^[27] Instead, all six selected finalists were students of Charles Lenepveu, a member of the jury and heir apparent of Dubois as director of the Conservatoire. The scandal – named the "Ravel Affair" by the Parisian press – engaged the entire artistic community, pitting conservatives against the avant-garde, and eventually caused the resignation of Dubois and his replacement by Fauré instead of Lenepveu, a vindication of sorts for Ravel.^[28] Alfred Edwards, editor of Le Matin, who had taken particular interest in the incident, took Ravel on a seven-week canal trip on his yacht Aimée through the Low Countries in June and July 1905, the first time Ravel traveled abroad.^[29] Though deprived of the opportunity to study in Rome, the decade after the scandal proved to be Ravel's most productive, and included his "Spanish period".^[30]

Ravel and Debussy[link]

Ravel met Debussy in the 1890s. Debussy was older than Ravel by some twelve years and his pioneering Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was influential among the younger musicians including Ravel, who were impressed by the new language of impressionism.^[31] In 1900, Ravel was invited to Debussy’s home and they played each other’s works. Viñes became the preferred piano performer for both composers and a go-between. The two composers attended many of the same musical events and were performed at the same concerts. Ravel and the Apaches were strong supporters of Debussy’s controversial public debut of his unconventional opera Pelléas et Mélisande, which garnered Debussy both fame and scorn.^[25]

The two musicians also appreciated much the same musical heritage and operated in the same artistic milieu, but they differed in terms of personality and their approach to music. Debussy was considered more spontaneous and casual in his composing while Ravel was more attentive to form and craftsmanship.^[32] Even though they worked independently of one another, because they employed differing means to similar ends, and because superficial similarities and even some more substantive ones are evident, the public and the critics associated them more than the facts warranted.^[33]

Ravel wrote that Debussy’s “genius was obviously one of great individuality, creating its own laws, constantly in evolution, expressing itself freely, yet always faithful to French tradition. For Debussy, the musician and the man, I have had profound admiration, but by nature I am different from Debussy.”^[34] Ravel further stated, “I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy.”^[15]

They admired each other’s music and Ravel even played Debussy’s work in public on occasion. However, Ravel did criticize Debussy sometimes, particularly regarding his orchestration, and he once said, "If I had the time, I would reorchestrate La mer."^[32]

By 1905, factions formed for each composer and the two groups began feuding in public. Disputes arose as to questions of chronology about their respective works and who influenced whom. The public tension caused personal estrangement.^[35] As Ravel said, “It is probably better after all for us to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons.”^[33] Ravel stoically absorbed superficial comparisons with Debussy promulgated by biased critics, including Pierre Lalo, an anti-Ravel critic who stated, “Where M. Debussy is all sensitivity, M. Ravel is all insensitivity, borrowing without hesitation not only technique but the sensitivity of other people.”^[35] During 1913, in a remarkable coincidence, both Ravel and Debussy independently produced and published musical settings for poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, again provoking comparisons of their work and their perceived influence on each other, which continued even after Debussy’s death five years later.^[36]

Early major works[link]

Ravel in 1906 (photograph by Pierre Petit)

The next of Ravel’s piano compositions to become famous was Miroirs (Mirrors, 1905), five piano pieces which marked a “harmonic evolution” and which one commentator described as “intensely descriptive and pictorial. They banish all sentiment in expression but offer to the listener a number of refined sensory elements which can be appreciated according to his imagination.”^[37] Next was his Histoires naturelles (Nature Stories), five humorous songs evoking the presence of five animals.^[38] Two years later, Ravel completed his Rapsodie espagnole, his first major "Spanish" piece, written first for piano four hands and then scored for orchestra. Though it employs folk-like melodies, no actual folk songs are quoted.^[39] It premiered in 1908 to generally good reviews, with one critic stating that it was "one of the most interesting novelties of the season", while Pierre Lalo (as usual) reacted negatively, calling it "laborious and pedantic".^[40] Next followed Ravel's music for the opera L'heure espagnole (The Spanish Hour), full of humor and rich in color, employing a wide variety of instruments and their characteristic qualities, including the trombone, sarrusophone, tuba, celesta, xylophone, and bells.^[41] The libretto was by Franc-Nohain, after his own comedy of the same name.

Ravel further extended his mastery of impressionistic piano music with Gaspard de la nuit, based on a collection by the same name by Aloysius Bertrand, with some influence from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, particularly in the second part.^[42] Viñes, as usual, performed the premiere but his performance displeased Ravel, and their relationship became strained from then on. For future premieres, Ravel replaced Viñes with Marguerite Long.^[43] Also unhappy with the conservative musical establishment which was discouraging performance of new music, around this time Ravel, Fauré, and some of his pupils formed the Société musicale indépendante (SMI). In 1910, the society presented the premiere of Ravel’s Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose) in its original piano duet version.^[44] With this work, Ravel followed in the tradition of Schumann, Mussorgsky, and Debussy, who also created memorable works of childhood themes. In 1912, Ravel's Ma mère l'oye was performed as a ballet (with added music) after being first transcribed from piano to orchestra.^[45] Looking to expand his contacts and career, Ravel made his first foreign tours to England and Scotland during 1909 and 1911.^[46]

[edit] Daphnis et Chloé

Ravel began work with impresario Sergei Diaghilev during 1909 for the ballet Daphnis et Chloé commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the famous ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev had taken Paris by storm the previous year in his Parisian opera debut, Boris Godunov.^[45] Daphnis et Chloé took three years to complete, with conflicts constantly arising among the principal artists, including Léon Bakst (sets and costumes), Michel Fokine (libretto), and Ravel (music).^[47] In frustration, Diaghilev nearly cancelled the project. The ballet had an unenthusiastic reception and lasted only two performances, only to be revived to acclaim a year later. Igor Stravinsky called Daphnis et Chloé "one of the most beautiful products of all French music" and author Burnett James claims that it is "Ravel's most impressive single achievement, as it is his most opulent and confident orchestral score".^[48] The work is notable for its rhythmic diversity, lyricism, and evocations of nature. The score utilizes a large orchestra and two choruses, one onstage and one offstage.^[49] So exhausting was the effort to score the ballet that Ravel's health deteriorated, with a diagnosis of neurasthenia soon forcing him to rest for several months.^[50] During 1914, just as World War I began, Ravel composed his Piano Trio (for piano, violin, and cello) with its Basque themes. The piece, difficult to play well, is considered a masterpiece among trio works.^[51]

War years[link]

Although he considered his small stature (1.61 m)^[52] and light weight an advantage to becoming an aviator, and he tried every means of securing service as a flyer, during the First World War Ravel was not allowed to enlist as a pilot because of his age and weak health.^[53] Instead, he became a truck driver stationed at the Verdun front.^[54] At one point Ravel's unit engaged a German unit that included a young Adolf Hitler.^[55] With his mother’s death in 1917, his fondest relationship ended and he fell into a “horrible despair”, adding to his ill health and the general gloom over the suffering endured by the people of his country during the war. However, during the war years, Ravel did manage some compositions, including one of his most popular works, Le tombeau de Couperin, a commemoration of the musical ideals of François Couperin, the early 18th-century composer, which premiered in 1919.^[56] Each movement is dedicated to a friend of Ravel's who died in the war, with the final movement dedicated to the deceased husband of Ravel’s favorite pianist Marguerite Long.^[56] During the war, the Ligue Nationale pour la Defense de la Musique Française (National League for the Defense of French Music) was formed but Ravel, despite his strong antipathy for the German aggression, declined to join stating:

“it would be dangerous for French composers to ignore systematically the works of their foreign colleagues, and thus form themselves into a sort of national coterie: our musical art, so rich at the present time, would soon degenerate and become isolated by its own academic formulas.”^[54]

Ravel was exhausted and lacking creative spirit at the war’s end in 1918. With the death of Debussy and the emergence of Satie, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, modern classical music had a new style to which Ravel would shortly re-group and make his contribution.^[57]

1920s[link]

Ravel's house in Montfort-l'Amaury, where the composer lived from 1921 until his death

Around 1920, Diaghilev commissioned Ravel to write La valse (The Waltz), originally named Wien (Vienna), which was to be used for a projected ballet. The piece, conceived many years earlier, became a waltz with a macabre undertone, famous for its “fantastic and fatal whirling”. However, it was rejected by Diaghilev as “not a ballet. It’s a portrait of ballet”. Ravel, hurt by the comment, ended the relationship.^[58] Subsequently, it became a popular concert work and when the two men met again in 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev's hand. Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel, but friends persuaded Diaghilev to recant. The two never met again.^[59]

In 1920, the French government awarded Ravel the Légion d'honneur, but he refused it.^[60] The next year, he retired to the French countryside where he continued to write music, albeit even less prolifically, but in more tranquil surroundings.^[61] He returned regularly to Paris for performances and socializing, and increased his foreign concert tours. Ravel maintained his influential participation with the SMI which continued its active role of promoting new music, particularly of British and American composers such as Arnold Bax, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, and Virgil Thomson.^[62] With Debussy’s death, Ravel became perceived popularly as the main composer of French classical music. As Fauré stated in a letter to Ravel in October 1922, “I am happier than you can imagine about the solid position which you occupy and which you have acquired so brilliantly and so rapidly. It is a source of joy and pride for your old professor.”^[63] In 1922, Ravel completed his Sonata for Violin and Cello. Dedicated to Debussy’s memory, the work features the thinner texture popular with the younger postwar composers.^[63]

The English, in particular, lauded Ravel, as The Times reported April 16, 1923, “Since the death of Debussy, he has represented to English musicians the most vigorous current in modern French music."^[63] In reality, however, Ravel’s own music was no longer considered au courant in France. Satie had become the inspiring force for the new generation of French composers known as Les Six.^[64] Ravel was fully aware of this, and was mostly effective in preventing a serious breach between his generation of musicians and the younger group.^[64]

In post-war Paris, American musical influence was strong. Jazz particularly was played in the cafes and became popular, and French composers including Ravel and Darius Milhaud were applying jazz elements to their work.^[18] Also in vogue was a return to simplicity in orchestration and a transition from the great scale of the works of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev were in the ascendant, and Arnold Schoenberg's experiments were leading music into atonality.^[65] These trends posed challenges for Ravel, always a slow and deliberate composer, who desired to keep his music relevant but still revered the past. This may have played a part in his declining output and longer composing time during the 1920s.^[65]

Around 1922, Ravel completed his famous orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky, which through its widespread popularity brought Ravel great fame and substantial profit.^[18] The first half of the 1920s was a particularly lean period for composing but Ravel did complete successful concert tours to Amsterdam, Milan, London, Madrid, and Vienna, which also boosted his fame. By 1925, by virtue of the unwelcomed pressure of a performance deadline, he finally finished his opera L'enfant et les sortilèges, with its significant jazz and ragtime accents. Famed writer Colette provided the libretto.^[66] Around this time, he also completed Chansons madécasses, the summit of his vocal art.^[67]

In 1927, Ravel’s String Quartet received its first complete recording. By this time Ravel, like Edward Elgar, had become convinced of the importance of recording his works, especially with his input and direction. He made recordings nearly every year from then until his death.^[68] That same year, he completed and premiered his Sonata for Violin and Piano, his last chamber work, with its second movement (titled “Blues”) gaining much attention.^[69]

Ravel also served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.^[70]

American tour[link]

Ravel at the piano, accompanied by Canadian singer Éva Gauthier, during his American tour, March 7, 1928. Third from right (standing) is conductor-composer Manoah Leide-Tedesco. At far right is George Gershwin.

After two months of planning, in 1928 Ravel made a four-month concert tour in North America, for a promised minimum of $10,000^[68] (approximately $135,349, adjusted for inflation^[71]). In New York City, he received a standing ovation, unlike any of his unenthusiastic premieres in Paris. His all-Ravel concert in Boston was equally acclaimed.^[72] The noted critic Olin Downes wrote, “Mr. Ravel has pursued his way as an artist quietly and very well. He has disdained superficial or meretricious effects. He has been his own most unsparing critic.”^[73] Ravel conducted most of the leading orchestras in the U.S. from coast to coast and visited twenty-five cities.^[74]

He also met the American composer George Gershwin in New York and went with him to hear jazz in Harlem, probably hearing some of the famous jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington.^[75] There is a story that when Gershwin met Ravel, he mentioned that he would like to study with the French composer. According to Gershwin, the Frenchman retorted, "Why do you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?"^[76] The second part of the story has Ravel asking Gershwin how much money he made. Upon hearing Gershwin's reply, Ravel suggested that maybe he should study with Gershwin. This tale may well be apocryphal: Gershwin seems also to have told a near-identical story about a conversation with Arnold Schoenberg, and some have claimed it was with Igor Stravinsky. (See George Gershwin.) In any event, this had to have been before Ravel wrote Boléro, which became financially very successful for him.

Ravel then visited New Orleans and imbibed the jazz scene there as well. His admiration of jazz, increased by his American visit, caused him to include some jazz elements in a few of his later compositions, especially the two piano concertos. The great success of his American tour made Ravel famous internationally.^[77]

Final years[link]

After returning to France, Ravel composed his most famous and controversial orchestral work Boléro, originally called Fandango. Ravel called it “an experiment in a very special and limited direction”.^[78] He stated his idea for the piece, “I am going to try to repeat it a number of times on different orchestral levels but without any development.”^[79] He conceived of it as an accompaniment to a ballet and not as an orchestral piece as, in his own opinion, “it has no music in it”, and was somewhat taken aback by its popular success.^[79] A public dispute began with conductor Arturo Toscanini. The Italian maestro, taking liberties with Ravel’s strict instructions, conducted the piece at a faster tempo and with an “accelerando at the finish”. Ravel insisted “I don’t ask for my music to be interpreted, but only that it should be played.” In the end, the feuding only helped to increase the work’s fame. A Hollywood film titled Bolero (1934), starring Carole Lombard and George Raft, made major use of the theme.^[80] Ravel made one of the few recordings of his own music when he conducted his Boléro with the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1930.

Remarkably, Ravel composed both of his piano concertos simultaneously.^[81] He completed the Concerto for the Left Hand first. The work was commissioned by Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during World War I. Ravel was inspired by the technical challenges of the project. As Ravel stated, “In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands.”^[82] At the premiere of the work, Ravel, not proficient enough to perform the work with only his left hand, played two-handed and Wittgenstein was reportedly underwhelmed by it. But later Wittgenstein stated, “Only much later, after I’d studied the concerto for months, did I become fascinated by it and realized what a great work it was.”^[83] In 1933, Wittgenstein played the work in concert for the first time to instant acclaim.^[84] Critic Henry Prunières wrote, “From the opening measures, we are plunged into a world in which Ravel has but rarely introduced us.”^[84]

The other piano concerto was completed a year later. Its lighter tone follows the models of Mozart, Domenico Scarlatti, and Saint-Saëns, and also makes use of jazz-like themes.^[85] Ravel dedicated the work to his favorite pianist, Marguerite Long, who played it and popularized it across Europe in over twenty cities, and they recorded it together in 1932.^[86] EMI later reissued the 1932 recording on LP and CD. Although Ravel was listed as the conductor on the original 78-rpm discs, it is possible he merely supervised the recording.

Ravel, ever modest, was bemused by the critics' sudden favor of him since his American tour: “Didn’t I represent to the critics for a long time the most perfect example of insensitivity and lack of emotion?... And the successes they have given me in the past few years are just as unimportant.”^[84]

Illness and death[link]

In 1932, Ravel suffered a major blow to the head in a taxi accident. This injury was not considered serious at the time.^[87] However, afterwards he began to experience aphasia-like symptoms and was frequently absent-minded.^[88] He had begun work on music for a film, Adventures of Don Quixote (1933) from Miguel de Cervantes's celebrated novel, featuring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and directed by G. W. Pabst. When Ravel became unable to compose, and could not write down the musical ideas he heard in his mind, Pabst hired Jacques Ibert. However, three songs for baritone and orchestra that Ravel composed for the film were later published under the title Don Quichotte a Dulcinée, and have been performed and recorded.^[87]

On April 8, 2008, the New York Times published an article suggesting Ravel may have been in the early stages of frontotemporal dementia during 1928, and this might account for the repetitive nature of Boléro.^[89] This accords with an earlier article, published in a journal of neurology, that closely examines Ravel's clinical history and argues that his works Boléro and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand both indicate the impacts of neurological disease.^[90] This is contradicted somewhat, however, by the earlier cited comments by Ravel about how he created the deliberately repetitious theme for Boléro.

In late 1937, Ravel consented to experimental brain surgery, evidently with some hesitation. On December 17, he entered a hospital in Paris, following the advice of the well-known neurosurgeon Clovis Vincent. Vincent assumed there was brain tumor, and on December 19 operated on Ravel. No tumor was found, but there was some shrinkage of the left hemisphere of his brain, which was re-inflated with serous fluid. When Ravel awoke from the anaesthesia, he asked for his brother, but quickly sank into a deep coma, from which he never awoke.^[91] He died on December 28, at the age of 62, in Paris.

Ravel's death was probably a result of the brain surgery, with the underlying cause arguably being a brain injury caused by the automobile accident in 1932, and not from a brain tumor as some believe.^[92] This confusion may arise because his friend George Gershwin had died from a brain tumor only five months earlier.

On December 30, 1937, Ravel was buried next to his parents in a granite tomb at the cemetery at Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris.

Personal life[link]

Ravel is not known to have had any intimate relationships, and his personal life, and especially his sexuality, remains a mystery. Ravel made a remark at one time suggesting that because he was such a perfectionist composer, so devoted to his work, he could never have a lasting intimate relationship with anyone.^[93] However, according to close friend and student Manuel Rosenthal, he asked violinist Hélène Jourdan-Mourhange to marry him, although she dismissed him, saying 'No, Maurice, I'm extremely fond of you, as you know, but only as a friend, and I couldn't possibly consider marrying you.'^[94] He is quoted as saying "The only love affair I have ever had was with music".^[95] Some of his friends suggested that Ravel frequented the bordellos of Paris, but no factual evidence has ever been found to substantiate this rumor.

A recent hypothesis presented by David Lamaze, a composition teacher at the Conservatoire de Rennes in France, is that he hid in his music representations of the nickname and the name of Misia Godebska, transcribed into two groups of notes, Godebska = G D E B A and Misia = Mi + Si + A = E B A. He was invited onto her boat during a 1905 cruise on the Rhine after his failure at the Prix de Rome, for which her husband, Alfred Edwards, organized a scandal in the newspapers. This same man owned the Casino de Paris where the Ravel family had a number staged, Tourbillon de la mort (A Car Somersault). The family of her half-brother, Cipa Godebski, is said to have been like a second family for Ravel. In 1907 on Misia's boat L'Aimée, Ravel completed L'heure espagnole and the Rapsodie espagnole, and at the premiere of Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel arrived late and did not go to his box but to Misia's, where he offered her a Japanese doll. In her memoirs, Misia hid all these facts.^[96]

In his Maurice Ravel: A Life, published in 2000, biographer Benjamin Ivry presents evidence in support of his thesis that Ravel's lack of known intimate relationships may be explained if he was a "very secretive" gay man. Ivry also attempts to illustrate examples where Ravel's sexuality may have been expressed in his musical compositions. In his review^[97] of Ivry's biography for Library Journal Larry Lipkis is persuaded by Ivry's research that, "There seems to be little question that Ravel was an affected, intensely secretive dandy with gay inclinations," but also expresses the view that Ivry's work is less persuasive in definitively linking Ravel's sexuality to characteristics of his musical oeuvre.

Legacy[link]

Many of Ravel's works are protected by copyright and due to various posthumous extensions will remain so until 2032 in the EU and US. The composer died childless and left everything to his brother Edouard who turned Ravel's house into a museum. Edouard was severely injured in a car accident in 1954 and required near constant care. In 1957, Edouard announced his intention to deed 80% of the composer's posthumous royalties to the city of Paris and endow a Nobel Prize in music.

Instead, Edouard consigned the rights to his nurse, Jeanne Taverne, and her husband Alexandre, a chauffer. When Edouard Ravel died in 1960, the Ravel estate fell subject to extensive litigation for ten years, reaching France's highest appellate court. Jeanne Taverne died before the litigation ended. During this period, Jean-Jacques Lemoine, the legal director of SACEM (the organization that collects and distributes royalties in France), froze distribution of Ravel's account.

When the litigation concluded, Lemoine resigned from SACEM and set up a shell company, Arima, with Alexandre Taverne for collecting Ravel's royalties. The company is based in Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands in order to avoid French taxes. The two also sued Ravel's publisher, then nearing retirement, to re-write the original contracts, consigning a greater percentage of the royalties to Arima than Durand's publisher. Since that time, the shell company has collected at least £30m and none of Ravel's estate has gone to the Ravel family or to further the cause of French music.^[98]

Musicality[link]

Musical sources[link]

Active during a period of great artistic innovations and diversification, Ravel benefited from many sources and influences, though his music defies any facile classification. As Vladimir Jankélévitch notes in his biography, "no influence can claim to have conquered him entirely […]. Ravel remains ungraspable behind all these masks which the snobbery of the century has attempted to impose."^[99]

Ravel's musical language was ultimately very original, neither absolutely modernist nor impressionist. Like Debussy, Ravel categorically refused this description of “impressionist” which he believed was reserved exclusively for painting.^[100]

Ravel was a remarkable synthesist of disparate styles. His music matured early into his innovative and distinct style. As a student, he studied the scores of composers of the past methodically: as he stated, "in order to know one's own craft, one must study the craft of others."^[101] Though he liked the new French music, during his youth Ravel still felt fond of the older French styles of Franck and the Romanticism of Beethoven and Wagner.^[12] Or, as Viñes put it, discussing Ravel's aesthetics (not his religion):

"He is, moreover, very complicated, there being in him a mixture of Middle Ages Catholicism and satanic impiety, but also a love of Art and Beauty which guide him and which make him react candidly."^[101]

Certain aspects of his music can be considered to belong to the tradition of 18th-century French classicism beginning with Couperin and Rameau as in Le Tombeau de Couperin. The uniquely 19th-century French sensibilities of Fauré and Chabrier are reflected in Sérénade grotesque, Pavane pour une infante défunte, and Menuet antique, while pieces such as Jeux d'eau, and the String Quartet in F owe something to the innovations of Satie and Debussy. The virtuosity and poetry of Gaspard de la nuit and Concerto for the left hand hint at Liszt and Chopin. His admiration for American jazz is echoed in L'enfant et les sortilèges, the Violin Sonata and the Piano Concerto in G, while the Russian school of music inspired homage in "À la manière de Borodin" and the orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Additionally, he variously cited Mozart, Saint-Saëns, Schubert and Schoenberg as inspirations for various pieces.

Musical style[link]

Ravel's music was innovative, though he did not follow the contemporary trend towards atonality, as pioneered by Schoenberg. Instead, he applied the aesthetics of the new French school of Chabrier, Satie, and particularly Debussy. Ravel's compositions rely upon modal melodies instead of using the major or minor scales for their predominant harmonic language. He preferred modes with major or minor flavors; for example, the Mixolydian instead of the major scale, and the Aeolian instead of the harmonic minor. As a result, there are virtually no leading tones in his output. Melodically, he tended to favor two modes: the Dorian and the Phrygian.^[102] Following the teachings of Gédalge, Ravel placed high importance on melody, once stating to Vaughan Williams, that there is "an implied melodic outline in all vital music."^[102]

In no way dependent on exclusively traditional modal practices, Ravel used extended harmonies and intricate modulations. He was fond of chords of the ninth and eleventh, and his characteristic harmonies are largely the result of a fondness for unresolved appoggiaturas, such as in the Valses nobles et sentimentales.^[103] He was inspired by various dances, his favorite being the minuet, composing the Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn in 1908, to commemorate the centenary of the death of Joseph Haydn. Other forms from which Ravel drew material include the forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera, passacaglia, and the boléro.

He believed that composers should be aware of both individual and national consciousness. For him, Basque music was influential. He intended to write an earlier concerto, Zazpiak Bat, but it was never finished. The title is a result of his Basque heritage: meaning 'The Seven Are One' (see Zazpiak Bat), it refers to the seven Basque regions, and was a motto often used in association with the idea of a Basque nation.^[104] Instead, Ravel abandoned the piece, using its nationalistic themes and rhythms in some of his other pieces. Ravel also used other folk themes including Hebraic, Greek, and Hungarian.^[105]

Ravel has almost always been considered one of the two great French impressionist composers, the other being Debussy. In reality Ravel was much more than an Impressionist (and in fact he resented being labelled as such). For example, he made extensive use of rollicking jazz tunes in his Piano Concerto in G Major in the first and third movements.^[106] Ravel also imitates Paganini's and Liszt's virtuoso gypsy themes and technique in Tzigane.^[107] In his À la manière de...Borodine (In the manner of...Borodin), Ravel plays with the ability to both mimic and remain original. In a more complex situation, A la maniere de...Emmanuel Chabrier/Paraphrase sur un air de Gounod ("Faust IIème acte"), Ravel takes on a theme from Gounod's Faust and arranges it in the style of Chabrier. He also composed short pieces in the manner of Haydn and his teacher Fauré.^[108] Even in writing in the style of others, Ravel's own voice as a composer remained distinct.

Ravel considered himself in many ways a classicist. He often relied on traditional forms, such as the ternary form, as well as traditional structures as ways of presenting his new melodic and rhythmic content, and his innovative harmonies.^[109] Ravel stated, "If I were called upon to do so, I would ask to be allowed to identify myself with the simple pronouncements made by Mozart ... He confined himself to saying that there is nothing that music cannot undertake to do, or dare, or portray, provided it continues to charm and always remain music."^[110] He often masked the sections of his structure with transitions that disguised the beginnings of the motif. This is apparent in his Valses nobles et sentimentales – inspired by Franz Schubert's collections, Valses nobles and Valses sentimentales – where the seven movements begin and end without pause, and in his chamber music where many movements are in sonata-allegro form, hiding the change from developmental sections to recapitulation.^[111]

From his own experience, Ravel was cognizant of the effect of new music on the ears of the public and he insightfully wrote:

On the initial performance of a new musical composition, the first impression of the public is generally one of reaction to the more superficial elements of its music, that is to say, to its external manifestations rather than to its inner content…often it is not until years after, when the means of expression have finally surrendered all their secrets, that the real inner emotion of the music becomes apparent to the listener.^[112]

Methods[link]

His own composing method was craftsman-like and perfectionistic. Igor Stravinsky once referred to Ravel as "the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers", a reference to the intricacy and precision of Ravel's works.^[113] Ravel, who sometimes spent years refining a piece, said, “My objective, therefore, is technical perfection. I can strive unceasingly to this end, since I am certain of never being able to attain it. The important thing is to get nearer to it all the time.”^[114]

More specifically he stated:

”In my own compositions I judge a long period of conscious gestation necessary. During this interval I come progressively, and with growing precision, to see the form and the evolution that the final work will take in its tonality. Thus I can be occupied for several years without writing a single note of the work, after which composition goes relatively quickly. But one must spend much time in eliminating all that could be regarded as superfluous in order to realize as completely as possible the definitive clarity so much desired. The moment arrives when new conceptions must be formulated for the final composition, but they cannot be artificially forced for they come only of their own accord, often deriving their original from some far-off perception and only manifesting themselves after long years.”^[113]

Many of his most innovative compositions were developed first as piano music. Ravel used this miniaturist approach to build up his architecture with many finely wrought strokes. To fill the requirements of larger works, he multiplied the number of small building blocks.^[109] This demonstrates the great regard he had for the piano traditions of Couperin, Scarlatti, Mozart, Chopin and Liszt.^[115] For example, Gaspard de la nuit can be viewed as an extension of Liszt’s virtuosity and advanced harmonics.^[116] Even Ravel’s most difficult pieces, however, are marked by elegance and refinement. Walter Gieseking found some of Ravel’s piano works to be among the most difficult pieces for the instrument but always based on “musically perfectly logical concepts”; not just technically demanding but also requiring the right expression.^[115]

Ravel’s great regard as an orchestrator is also based on his thorough methods. He usually notated the string parts first and insisted that the string section “sound perfectly in and of itself”.^[117] In writing for the other sections, he often preferred to score in tutti to produce a full, clear resonance. To add surprise and added color, the melody might start with one instrument and be continued with another.^[118]

Because of his perfectionism and methods, Ravel’s musical output over four decades is quite small. Most of his works were thought out over considerable lengths of time, then notated quickly, and refined painstakingly.^[119] When a piece would not progress, he would abandon a piece until inspired anew.^[120] There are only about sixty compositions in all, of which slightly more than half are instrumental. Ravel’s body of work includes pieces for piano, chamber works, two piano concerti, ballet music, opera, and song cycles.^[5] Though wide-ranging in his music, Ravel avoided the symphonic form as well as religious themes and forms.^[121]

Ravel crafted his manuscripts meticulously, and relentlessly polished and corrected them. He destroyed hundreds of sketches and even re-copied entire autographs to correct one mistake. Early printed editions of his works were prone to errors so he worked painstakingly with his publisher, Durand, to correct them.^[119]

Pianist and conductor[link]

Though a competent pianist, Ravel decided early on to have virtuosi, like Ricardo Viñes, premiere and perform his work. As his career evolved, however, Ravel was again called upon to play his own piano music, and to conduct his larger works, particularly during a tour, both of which he considered chores in the same mold as "circus performances". Only rarely did he conduct works of other composers.^[122] One London critic stated "His baton is not the magician's wand of a virtuoso conductor. He just stood there beating time and keeping watch."^[123] As to how his music was to be played, Ravel was always clear and direct with his instructions.^[123]

Transcriber and orchestrator[link]

Ravel was and is a leading figure in the art of transcription and orchestration. During his life Ravel studied the ability of each orchestral instrument carefully in order to determine its possible effects while being sensitive to individual color and timbre.^[17] Ravel regarded orchestration as a task separate from composition, involving distinct technical skills. He was always careful to ensure that the writing for each family of instruments worked in isolation as well as in the complete ensemble. While he disapproved of tampering with his own works once completed, orchestration gave him the opportunity to view works in a different context.^[16] Among the most famous of his orchestral transcriptions is his own Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917) of which he orchestrated the Prelude, Forlane, Minuet, and Rigaudon movements in 1919. The orchestral version clarifies the harmonic language of the suite and brings sharpness to its classical dance rhythms. Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is best known through its orchestration by Ravel. In this version, produced in 1922, Ravel omits the Promenade between "Samuel" Goldenberg und "Schmuÿle" and Limoges and applies artistic license to some particulars of dynamics and notation as well as putting forth the virtuoso effort of a master colourist throughout.

Musical influence[link]

Ravel was always a supporter of young musicians, through his society and associations and through his personal individual advice and his help in securing performance dates. His closest students included Maurice Delage, Manuel Rosenthal, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Alexis Roland-Manuel and Vlado Perlemuter.^[93] Ravel modeled his teaching methods after his own teacher Gabriel Fauré, avoiding formulas and emphasizing individualism. Ravel's preferred way of teaching would be to have a conversation with his students and demonstrate his points at the piano. He was rigorous and demanding in teaching counterpoint and fugue, as he revered Johann Sebastian Bach without reservation. But in all other areas, he considered Mozart the ideal, with the perfect balance between "classical symmetry and the element of surprise", and with works of clarity, perfect craftsmanship, and measured amounts of lyricism. Often Ravel would challenge a student with "What would Mozart do?" and then ask the student to invent his own solution.^[124]

Though never a paid critic as Debussy had been, Ravel had strong opinions on historical and contemporary music and musicians, which influenced his younger contemporaries. In creating his own music, he tended to avoid the more monumental composers as models, finding relatively little kinship with or inspiration from Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz or Franck. However, as an outspoken commentator on the Romantic giants, he found much of Beethoven "exasperating", Wagner's influence "pernicious" and Berlioz's harmony "clumsy". He had considerable admiration for other 19th-century masters such as Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Schubert.^[125] Despite what he considered its technical deficiencies, Ravel was a strong advocate of Russian music and praised its spontaneity, orchestral color, and exoticism.^[126]

Notable compositions[link]