ekilpatrick.bsky.social
Musician, scholar, mother, expat; associate professor @ Royal Academy of Music. New book: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781648250545/french-art-song/
Biography of Ravel coming soon…
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Discussion Master
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My biography of #Ravel will be published shortly by
@reaktionbooks.bsky.social, and is available for pre-order now! #Ravel150 reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/maurice-ravel
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So happy birthday #Ravel, and thankyou. #Ravel150 www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEES...
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62. Late in life Ravel reflected, ‘My object . . . is technical perfection. I can strive unceasingly towards this end, as I am certain that I will never attain it. The important thing is to get closer all the time.’ #Ravel150
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61. Another friend, the poet Léon-Paul #Fargue, wrote simply that #Ravel was ‘a profoundly sensitive and good man’. #Ravel150
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60. Ravel’s friends loved him dearly: he ‘was the surest, most faithful and most profoundly affectionate of friends’, Roland-Manuel wrote. #Ravel150
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59. Ravel liked to have his own way, his younger brother noted, but he wanted others to agree with him in considering it the best way – ‘otherwise his pleasure was spoiled’. #Ravel150
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58. Ravel was a punishing and sometimes infuriating collaborator, but a generous one; a demanding friend, but intensely loyal; an exacting teacher, who laid down boundaries to watch his students discover how to breach them. #Ravel150
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57. Ravel had a dry, biting wit, and a lively sense of the ridiculous; he was funny, sharp and quick to anger. #Ravel150
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6. To another friend, Ravel mourned, ‘I’ve written nothing, I’ll leave nothing, I’ve said nothing of what I wanted to express!’ #Ravel150
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55. In his mid-50s Ravel was crippled by a rare form of early onset dementia. Weeping after a performance of Daphnis, he told a friend, ‘I’ll never write like that again, but it was good, all the same, it was good’. #Ravel150
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54. In Texas, Ravel's 1928 tour produced the memorable headline ‘Reporters Mourn Lack of French as Maurice Ravel Talks about Jazz and US in Native Tongue’. #Ravel150
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53. From the US Ravel kept a close eye on things at home, sending a letter to his brother, from somewhere along the Mississippi, to ask whether he’d done anything about getting a new vacuum cleaner for Montfort. #Ravel150
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52. A standing ovation from a 3000-strong crowd after a Boston Symphony performance moved Ravel to tears: ‘This would never happen to me in Europe’. #Ravel150
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51. When Ravel toured America in 1928, his hosts were startled to discover that he had brought with him twenty pairs of pyjamas and fifty-seven ties. #Ravel150
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50. His first housekeeper drank too much and ran off with his favourite umbrella. Ravel was VERY upset about this. #Ravel150
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49. He was proud of his ‘faux Monticello’ painting; when his friend teased him ‘Ravel, it’s disgraceful of you to hang that horror on the wall!’ he responded indignantly, ‘But I know it’s fake and it amuses me’. #Ravel150
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48. Ravel loved to offer extravagant cocktails, which took forever to concoct in a special cupboard halfway down the winding kitchen stairs. #Ravel150
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47. At Montfort Ravel acquired a family of Siamese cats, which he loved to sketch. #Ravel150
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46. In 1921 #Ravel moved into Le Belvédère in #Montfort-l’Amaury. Years of renovations followed: ‘You’ll see I’m not hiding the attractions!’ he wrote of the pile of radiators in the garden and the brackish water. #Ravel150
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45. Ravel spent much of the summer of 1920 helping nurse a friend dying of cancer. The first movement of the Duo for Violin and Cello was sketched between night watches. #Ravel150
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44. Serge #Diaghilev rejected La Valse for his Ballets russes, telling him ‘Ravel, it’s a masterpiece… but it’s not a ballet. It’s the portrait of a ballet… It’s the painting of a ballet.’ #Ravel150
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43. Ravel dispatched the manuscript of La Valse to his publishers with the cheery note ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t get lost, I haven’t kept a draft’. #Ravel150
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42. Trying to complete La Valse, Ravel travelled to a friend’s house in the Rhône-Alpes, writing, ‘This has got to work: not being able to travel to Vienna, I’ve installed myself close to…Vals!’ #Ravel150
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41. Ravel loved mechanical metaphors: new pieces might be ‘en panne’ (broken down); hard at work, he writes ‘Je turbine’. After the War, ‘The magneto’s worn out’; but by the end of 1919 ‘I’ve got La Valse started up at last and I’m in 4th gear!’ #Ravel150
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40. The six movements Ravel's 'Le tombeau de Couperin' are all dedicated to the memory of friends killed during the First World War. #Ravel150
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39. After the war #Ravel never drove a vehicle again, haunted by the visceral terror of his war service. #Ravel150
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38. Ravel's truck, which he’d christened Adélaïde, then broke down, leaving him to play Robinson Crusoe (as he put it) in the woods for over a week. #Ravel150
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37. So he spent months driving a truck around Verdun , and left stunning descriptions of the abandoned town: ‘I will doubtless see more horrifying, more repugnant sights; I do not think I will ever experience anything as profound and strange as this sort of mute terror.’
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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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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
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34. Late in life Ravel reflected, ‘It was listening to 'L’Après-midi d'un faune' for the first time that I understood what music was.’ #Ravel150
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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
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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
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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
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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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29. Ravel helped #Stravinsky book his hotel for the premiere of the Rite of Spring, ensuring he found one neighbouring his own apartment: ‘that way we can exchange courtesies from our balconies in our pyjamas!’ #Ravel150
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28. The finale of 'Daphnis et Chloe; drove Ravel mad; he even asked Louis Aubert – perhaps only half-joking – to write the finale ‘and I will sign it’ (Aubert sensibly refused). #Ravel150
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27. Ravel was a staunch advocate of #Satie: in 1912 he wrote to René Lenormand to advise that his draft treatise on contemporary harmony had ‘omitted the composer who should perhaps hold the most important place: Erik Satie’. #Ravel150
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26. Mimi Godebska, for whom Ravel wrote Ma mère l’Oye, recalled that ‘Of all my parents’ friends I had a predilection for Ravel because he used to tell me stories that I loved. I used to climb on his knee and indefatigably he would begin, “Once upon a time…”’ #Ravel150
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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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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.'
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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18. Ravel left the manuscript of his Introduction et Allegro on the counter of a Parisian tailor’s shop; fortunately the shopkeeper retrieved and returned it. #Ravel150
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17. Ravel’s father and brother invented a stunt vehicle called ‘La Tourbillon de la Mort’ (the Whirlwind of Death): when launched from a ramp, it was capable of turning a somersault metres in the air.
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16. In the early 1900s Ravel and his friends created an imaginary friend, ‘Gomez de Riquet’, with whom they could pretend to be dining if they wanted to refuse an unwelcome invitation. #Ravel150
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15. One of Ravel’s Basque cousins gave him a piece of ‘hangman’s rope’ as a lucky token for the Prix de Rome. He still lost – and though he offered to divide the rope between the performers of his cantata in gratitude, ‘what do you think? None of them wanted it!!!’ #Ravel150