Celebrations of Maurice Ravel’s 150^th birthday, beginning on March 4^th throughout America and Europe, are continuing; some of the program handouts must have noted that while Ravel is seldom mentioned in college music history courses, nearly all of his surviving compositions have remained popular on concert and recital programs ever since his death in 1937. No other composer since Chopin has brought forth such a high proportion of major work, such a low titer of inferior product, and almost every note that he composed since 1895 has been published and remained in print. (I still have a copy of the rarely heard Frontispice [sic] for piano five hands, out of print for many years since 1919.)

He is invariably compared with Debussy, whose impressionism launched Ravel’s whole compositional persona; and the points of comparison are significant because each regularly and sometimes systematically lifted from the other’s work or danced on the same stage. (See Chapter 8, “Debussy and Ravel: How to Tell Them Apart,” in my book, Debussy and the Veil of Tonality, 2004.) They were closely similar in their fastidious tastes in literature and the arts; both preferred French traditions from the start, recognizing the neglected importance of Rameau, Chabrier and Satie; both wrote some of the best music ever for children. Both were active performers, Debussy being the better pianist and Ravel probably the better orchestral conductor; both wrote magnificently for keyboard, but Ravel’s piano style was the more original; both orchestrated brilliantly, and while Debussy’s orchestral style was more subtle Ravel’s mastery of instrumental detail was the more polished; etc., etc. Once you know their music well, these differences, as well as the similarities, recede into triviality. Debussy was a private womanizer with a taste for philandering; Ravel had many women friends but no known sex life of any kind (the rumors of his gaiety with Stravinsky are nonsense), etc. Both composers are totally French, totally modern, and sometimes even totally classical in their absorption in 18^th-century form — Ravel more so. Ravel, the more cosmopolitan, traveled to America, Debussy didn’t; Debussy visited Russia several times, Ravel didn’t; both absorbed Spanish traditions in their works (Ravel, part Spanish and part Basque on his mother’s side, was born near the Spanish border). Both were close to and worked with the upstart Stravinsky; but Ravel orchestrated Mussorgsky, and left a Russian-sixth (HERE) tribute in his gemlike Waltz à la manière de Borodine. See above right.

Ravel went beyond Debussy in his originality of tonal harmony, unmatched by any other composer in the 20^th century or since; his discoveries in that realm, especially chromatic harmony, are enormous, and have been expropriated freely and completely by three generations of Hollywood composers, pop songwriters, and jazz originals. See right below.

Ravel’s two operas are masterpieces of stagecraft but what they do for musical form is even more impressive; they essentially raise the chamber-opera aesthetic to monumentality in less than an hour and eliminate the function of the big-name singer. Perhaps the pairing of l’Heure espagnole and l’Enfant et les sortilèges has already set a full-evening standard that will displace Cav and Pag; the unparalleled magic is all there.

Ravel’s craftsmanship is likewise unmatched, and his scores well-nigh perfect in graphic form, notwithstanding that his publishers didn’t always keep track (it’s worth mentioning the example of Gaspard de la nuit, one of the greatest monuments of piano music, composed 1908; the Durand score is still in print and reprint with all the errors in the original edition [1909] remaining uncorrected, although Ravel’s shelf copy, now in the BN, notes 60 of them; to see an accurate score of this work, get the Peters edition edited by Roger Nichols).

In 1905, reaching the age of 30, Ravel failed for the third and last time to win the Grand Prix de Rome as a composer. A political upheaval at the Conservatoire followed, from which he mostly remained aloof, but which enabled him to take a vacation and to compose the thoroughly lovable Introduction and Allegro. His public has remained loyal ever since.

Mark DeVoto, musicologist and composer, is an expert on the music of Alban Berg, Debussy, and other early 20th-century composers. A graduate of Harvard College (1961) and Princeton (Ph.D., 1967), he has published on many music subjects, and edited the revised fourth (1978) and fifth (1987) editions of Harmony by his teacher Walter Piston.