Ravel works

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937), was a great French composer. He was influenced by French music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, by American jazz, and by the French school of Emmanuel Chabrier, Erik Satie, and especially Claude Debussy. Nevertheless, Ravel was extraordinarily original. He is widely admired for his innovative and distinctive style, and he produced numerous masterpieces.

Bolero is a one-movement orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel. Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian actress and dancer Ida Rubinstein, the piece  premiered in 1928.

A tough critic of his own work, Ravel said to the Cuban composer Joaquín Nin that the work had "no form, properly speaking, no development, no or almost no modulation". In a newspaper interview with The Daily Telegraph (London, England) in July 1931 Ravel said:

"It [Bolero] constitutes an experiment in a very special and limited direction, and should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve. Before its first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of "orchestral tissue without music" — of one very long, gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution."

A popular piece, Bolero has been used in numerous video games and soundtracks for movies and television.

Pavane pour Une Infante Defunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) is a well-known piece written in 1899 for solo piano by the French composer Maurice Ravel, who published an orchestrated version in 1910. Ravel described the piece as "an evocation of a pavane (slow processional dance) that a little princess might, in former times, have danced at the Spanish court". The piece is not meant to pay tribute to any particular princess, but rather expresses a nostalgic enthusiasm for Spanish customs and sensibilities.

Ravel's Prelude in A minor, M.65, was composed in 1913. According to Robert Stahlbrand's comments at the Piano Society website:

"Ravel composed this wonderful little Prelude in 1913 as a conservatory test. The students were not allowed to see the score before it was to be executed and the tricky part about it is to read the score right to for the hand crossings that must be applied to execute it properly. It is also well used by today's teachers for the same purpose but also as an exercise to apply the appropriate velocity to achieve the tenderness of the prelude. It is my view that any pianist should play this at least once in their life."

Sonatine, M.40, is a piano work written by Maurice Ravel between 1903 and 1905. It has three movements:

1. Modéré, in F-sharp minor

2. Mouvement de menuet, in D-flat major

3. Animé, F-sharp minor

From pianist Richard Dowling's website:

"Ravel’s inspiration for composing his Sonatine was a 1903 competition sponsored by a fine arts and literary magazine called Weekly Critical Review. Ravel’s close friend, critic M. D. Calvocoressi, was a contributor to the publication and encouraged Ravel to enter the competition. The requirement was a first movement of a piano sonatina no longer than seventy-five measures, and the prize offered was one hundred francs. The magazine was nearing bankruptcy at the time and ultimately the publisher canceled the competition. Ironically, Ravel would have probably won the competition since he was the only entrant, but his first movement was a few measures too long.

"Two years later, Ravel completed the second and third movements ... The Sonatine quickly became popular with audiences and Ravel performed the first two movements regularly on concert programs across Europe and during his tour of America in 1928. (He did not often perform the last movement because he did not feel capable of playing it well enough.) ... The last movement is a tour de force of brilliant virtuosic writing for the piano."

Tutorials

• Bolero  Partial   Sheetmusic

• Ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose)

                 V.  Le jardin féerique 

• Pavane pour Une Infante Defunte     Part 1  Measures 1 to 49      Part 2  Measures 50 to end

• Prelude in A minor, M.65   Slow

• Ravel Le Tombeau de Couperin   

  • •  I. Prelude    Prelude digitally sped 4x

    • III. Forlane  Part 1       Part 2

    • VI. Toccata   Part 1       Part 2 (requested by a few)      Part 3

• Sonatine, M.40    I. Modéré ("moderate")     II. Mouvement de menuet    III. Animé ("animated")

Sheetmusic at imslp.org