Maurice Ravel was born in 1875 in a little village in southern France near the Spanish border. His father was Swiss and his mother was Basque. Ravel's devotion to his mother bordered on the 1)obsessive, but it is from her that he developed his passion for Spanish music.
Jean Yves Thibaudet（pianist）: Spanish composers have said that Ravel and 2)Debussy have written better Spanish music than Spanish composers. And this is true. I mean, it's funny that those guys were able to write music from a country that they had never even visited.
William Littler(critic): Ravel loved Spain. For some reason, some of the best Spanish music has been written by French composers. Chabriet certainly wrote some of it. And Ravel wrote quite a lot. And we needn't say anything more than Bolero.
Alexina Louie(composer): I believe Ravel was afraid that Bolero was going to be the piece that he was going to be remembered for. It's an unusual piece. It's an unusual piece for today. Because it's one 3)melodic line that just keeps repeating and there's really no development in it. What he changes is the 4)orchestral color by adding different instruments each time the melody comes back.
William Littler(critic): Don't think that it doesn't need a 5)conductor -- it has to be properly controlled, the 6)climax can't come too early. The various sections of the orchestra have to be kept in the right balance. It's 7)subtly done despite the fact that the 8)overt impression is an obvious one. And I think that there isn't a better 20th century showpiece for 9)spotlighting the individual 10)solo instruments of the orchestra, too. Small wonder orchestras like to play it -- they can 11)show themselves off.
His new work was 12)premiered at the Paris opera in 1928, and was an immediate success with audiences. There was something incredibly colorful about the music.
Richard Westerfield(conductor): Ravel and Debussy as well, wrote at a time when classical music was going through so many changes and 13)tonality had all but exhausted itself 14)seemingly. And without Ravel and the music of the 15)impressionists, it's very hard to imagine where music would be today. Because all we would have then, as far taking tonality and moving it into something new and 16)evolving it, would be the 17)neo-classicists, Stravinsky, etc. To have that impressionist's school gave music so much of an expanded vocabulary of where tonality could go.
William Littler(critic): Color in music is a difficult concept because it's a 18)visual concept. What it means is, if you play one note with one instrument, and play the same note with the different instrument, you got a different color as we call it. There are details that we could talk about in terms of the 19)harmonic series and so on, but essentially, that's what we're getting at. And he had a 20)sensitivity to the individual tone qualities of the instrument that was really extraordinarily 21)refined.
Jean Yves Thibaudet（pianist）: One time in Paris for the, you know, 153rd time, maybe whatever was being played in there was yet again, and Ravel was invited so he went there. He was sitting in his 22)lounge. And in those days, there was another composer called Camil Chavial who was never very famous now, but in those days he was famous. So Ravel had invited him to be his guest at the concert. And the concert starts and Chavial doesn't show up and The Bolero starts, five minutes and ten minutes and twelve minutes, and Chavial is not there, and Ravel is really insulted. He says, you know, he could've been on time, really, that's really bad. And then about 30 seconds before the end of the piece, the door of his lounge opens and here comes Chavial. He sits down and the piece is finished and everybody's clapping, and Ravel is acknowledging it, and finally turns around and says, he said, “Really Chavial, you're really very impolite. You could've been here at the beginning of the piece, what happened to you?” Chavial looked at him and he said, “24)Merde! I only came for the 23)modulation.”
