Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was a French composer, usually dubbed an impressionist, who used color and harmony with great skill in his music to create evocative and lush scores that are among the staples of today’s concert repertory. Though his music is often noted as being stylistically akin to that of Debussy, Ravel himself identified earlier composers, such as Mozart and Couperin, as his primary inspiration, and admired the form and structural rigor of their music. Ravel’s music often incorporates other contemporary references and international influences, including American jazz (notably in his violin sonata), Asian music and European folk songs.

Ravel’s viewed orchestration as a vital art, distinct from composing, and he is perhaps best-known for his ballets and symphonic music. In these large-scale works, Ravel takes full advantage of the ensemble’s full range of color, and sometimes augments it, including wordless choruses that employ the voice as another instrument. In his chamber music, Ravel creates a similarly evocative palette with smaller forces. He also wrote a number of songs for voice and piano or orchestra. A pianist himself, Ravel wrote with particular virtuosity for the keyboard. As the New Grove Dictionary notes, “His instrumental writing – whether for solo piano, for ensemble or for orchestra – explored new possibilities… and his fascination with the past and with the exotic resulted in music of a distinctively French sensibility and refinement.”