19. The first movement of Ravel’s Sonatine was written for a competition; he signed his manuscript ‘Verla’ (the jury shouldn’t have found it hard to unravel that). #Ravel150
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20. The first performance of 'Histoires naturelles' prompted the staid Société nationale de musique to a ‘veritable revolt’; one critic wrote sternly, ‘The Société nationale is not a Music-Hall’. #Ravel150
21. The song 'Sur l’herbe' was written while Ravel was battling charges of ‘debussysme’ and plagiarism in the musical press; that’s probably why the last line, ‘Hé! bonsoir la Lune!’ (‘Good evening, Moon!’) cheekily quotes Debussy’s ‘Clair de lune’. #Ravel150
22. In his first opera, L’heure espagnole, Ravel not only parodies Wagnerian leitmotifs, but uses ‘Tristan’ chords as a deliberate comic shorthand (‘thwarted desire!’). #Ravel150
23. When the director of the Opéra-Comique rejected his opera Ravel wrote, ‘I realise now that the least innocent foible of Carmen, Manon, Chrysis or Queen Fiamette was picking their nose too much.’ #Ravel150
24. An influential Parisian hostess intervened to get L’heure espagnole onstage: ‘Her first impulse was to write to Carré’, Ravel writes; ‘After mature consideration she decided nevertheless to follow her impulse, and the most pungent exchange of correspondence followed.'
25. Ravel gave Vaughan Williams composition lessons in 1908, his assignments including orchestrating passages of Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov: ‘He showed me how to orchestrate in points of colour rather than lines’, #RVW recalled. #Ravel150
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