Piano bleu maurice ravel biography

Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure , south of Biarritz in the south-west corner of France, in When still young his family moved to Paris, although Ravel was to return to Ciboure in later life. He started piano lessons at the age of seven, and was composing short pieces by the age of 12 or His parents, though not musicians themselves, encouraged his music and he studied at the Paris Conservatory.

Piano bleu maurice ravel biography

He was very influenced by Liszt in his piano playing. Indignant protests were published, and liberal-minded musicians and writers, including the musicologist and novelist Romain Rolland, supported Ravel. Ravel was in no sense a revolutionary musician. He was for the most part content to work within the established formal and harmonic conventions of his day, still firmly rooted in tonality—i.

Yet, so very personal and individual was his adaptation and manipulation of the traditional musical idiom that it would be true to say he forged for himself a language of his own that bears the stamp of his personality as unmistakably as any work of Bach or Chopin. While his melodies are almost always modal i. The latter work gave Ravel an opportunity of doing ingenious and amusing things with the animals and inanimate objects that come to life in this tale of bewitchment and magic in which a naughty child is involved.

He served in World War I for a short time as a truck driver at the front, but the strain was too great for his fragile constitution, and he was discharged from the army in Perhaps the real tragedy of his condition was that his musical imagination remained as active as ever. He would remain there for over a dozen years, and was an excellent and disciplined student; though sometimes at odds with his instructors for the avant-garde bent of his compositions as an adult student.

His first pieces for the piano were written at the age of 18, and almost all of his later work would be composed on the instrument. Gabriel Faur, an esteemed French composer of the day, was one of Ravel's teachers, and the sole one to provide him with encouragement to explore the creative possibilities outside the traditional training given at the Conservatoire.

Ravel's first published work, Menuet Antique , appeared in He also wrote a Spanish-themed work for two pianos, Habanera , that year, with his good friend, the pianist Ricardo Vines, whom he knew from the Conservatoire for several years. Both had Spanish mothers, and Vines would go on to an acclaimed concert career. Habanera was not published until a few years later, when Ravel included it as part of Les Sites Auriculaires , which premiered at the first public performance of a Ravel composition in March of Later he would orchestrate the Habanera work into his Rhapsodie Espagnole from Sheherazade was Ravel's first work for orchestra, and was performed in Paris at the Societe Nationale de Musique in May of , which he also conducted.

His piano piece, Pavane pour une infante dfunte , was published that same year and proved extremely popular upon its debut at another Societe concert in The concerts made him a rising star in the competitive music scene in Paris. Another work performed that same evening, Jeux d'Eau "Fountains" , would also receive a strong critical reception.

An essay on Ravel in Composers Since called Jeux d'Eau "remarkable for its unusual resonances, extraordinary exploitation of piano sonorities, and its brilliant use of the upper register of the keyboard It opened a new world of haunting sounds and timbres for piano writing; certainly it opened them for Debussy who, from the moment he became acquainted with it, began to write for the piano in an entirely new manner.

Their name reflected their renegade attitude toward the staid conservatism of the Parisian musical world, and they strove to write and promote innovative and fresh works. One controversial effort they rallied behind was Claude Debussy's opera Pelleas et Melisande. Ravel's demanding piano masterwork, Miroirs , originated at an Apache evening, and its five movements were dedicated to different members of the group.

Vines gave its first public performance. Ravel met with continued success in the early years of the century. His chamber piece Quartet in F major , first performed in March of , met with tremendous critical success and would become a favorite with audiences as well. Still, the accolades and financial bounties showered upon Ravel also provoked professional jealousy inside the competitive Parisian music scene, and in he was declared ineligible to compete for the prestigious Prix de Rome, the most important award for young composers in France, and a Conservatoire-affiliated competition that he had entered thrice before.

Some of his earliest memories include folk songs that his mother sang for him. When Maurice Ravel turned six, he started piano lessons and received his first instruction in harmony counterpart and composition with Charles-Rene. In , at the age of 14, he had his first public piano recital. Although he was talented in piano, Maurice preferred composing.

He was also able to meet Ricardo Vines and the two became best friends. Ricardo actually became the first interpreter of his piano music, and he served as an important link between Ravel and Spanish music. At first, he was a preparatory student, but later he became a piano major. He was awarded first prize in a piano student competition in In , he created his earliest music composition and he was also introduced to Erik Satie, a pianist whose musical work had proved to be very influential.

In , Maurice joined a number of poets, young artists, musicians and critics referred to as Apaches hooligans.