Joseph Maurice Ravel [ n 1 ] 7 March β 28 December was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy , although both composers rejected the term.
In the s and s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire ; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism , baroque , neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz.
Renowned for his abilities in orchestration , Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' piano music, of which his version of Mussorgsky 's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known. A slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies or church music.
Many of his works exist in two versions: first, a piano score and later an orchestration. Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public. From the s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works; others were made under his supervision.
Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure , France, near Biarritz , 18 kilometres 11 mi from the Spanish border. His father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel , was an educated and successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer, born in Versoix near the Franco-Swiss border. In 19th-century terms, Joseph had married beneath his status β Marie was illegitimate and barely literate β but the marriage was a happy one. Both Ravel's parents were Roman Catholics ; Marie was also something of a free-thinker , a trait inherited by her elder son.
