30. The closing bars of Ravel’s 'À la manière de Chabrier' bring FOUR composers into dialogue: he imitates Chabrier paraphrasing a Gounod aria, with a fleeting nod to Tristan too. #Ravel150
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31. Ravel was a sharp musical critic. Of César Franck’s Symphony, he wrote ‘Just when the inspiration is at its peak, one is disconcerted by extraneous sonorities’. #Ravel150
32. And he could be cheeky in his criticism: #Parsifal, he concluded, was ‘less entertaining than La vie parisienne. All the same, it is less boring than the Missa solemnis, that inferior work by #Beethoven’. #Ravel150
33. Despite his personal and professional struggles with Debussy and ‘debussysme’, Ravel was a staunch defender of Debussy in print, describing him in one review as ‘the most important and profoundly musical composer living today’. #Ravel150
35. Ravel had little patience with the machinations of conservative critics: sending a blistering article to press he wrote to the journal’s editor, ‘This is, I think, not at all what you asked for. It’s more combative – but I believe it’s what had to be said.’ #Ravel150
36. Ravel tried desperately and unsuccessfully to join the air force in 1914, despite his little brother's disapproval: ‘The damn things keep crashing’, Edouard wrote. #Ravel150
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