Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Performed by Toledo Symphony Chamber Musicians on September 28, 2025

Composer and pianist Maurice Ravel is most commonly associated with the French Impressionist movement, along with his contemporary, Claude Debussy, though neither acknowledged the label. Ravel was raised in a musical household and had access to an excellent musical education at the Paris Conservatory, where he decided against a career as a concert pianist and opted to devote his life to composing. Predictably, his first works to gain wide popularity were for piano. However, his unique compositional style did not mesh with the conservative values of the institution, and after several years, Ravel left the school without completing his coursework.

Ravel is renowned for his mastery of orchestration and color and held himself to the highest standard. Musicologist Josiah Fisk writes, “Never less than a gentleman, Ravel could be vigorous and unyielding when writing in defense of his artistic principles. His essays and reviews also evince the ironic detachment and dry wit that are evident in his music. These latter qualities he shared with Debussy, along with an affinity for the coloristic that was to become the defining characteristic of Impressionism. It is not accurate to say, however, that he imitated Debussy. Ravel’s works are more classical in their basic design and are sometimes more elaborate harmonically.”

Ravel began composing his String Quartet in F Major in 1902 and completed it the following year while still studying at the Paris Conservatory. He had entered the Grand Prix de Rome more than once but had not been able to win first prize. He entered again with the first movement of his new quartet, but unfortunately the judges were uncomfortable with some of its more modern elements and Ravel was disappointed again. Despite the negative opinion of the contest judges, Ravel’s String Quartet is one of his most popular works and is a staple of the repertoire. It is a wonderful example of Ravel’s ability to combine clear formal structures with sensuous textures and is hailed as his first masterwork. Annotator Kathy Henkel writes, “For all its youthful ardor, the quartet displays astonishing technical maturity. Ravel’s imaginative and expert handling of string resources and sounds foretells of dazzling future orchestrations.”

Ravel’s String Quartet is in the traditional four movements and uses related themes across them as a means of unifying the full work, as Debussy did in his quartet ten years before. The first movement, Allegro moderato – Très doux (“very sweetly”), is in sonata form and features long lyrical melodies. The second movement, Assez vif – très rythmé, is a shorter and livelier movement in triple meter. It features playful rhythms reminiscent of Iberian folk music—a nod to Ravel’s Basque heritage—and extensive use of pizzicato throughout, though there is a slower and more songful central section.

The nocturne-like Très lent that follows is melodically related to the opening movement, and here Ravel makes use of tremolo as an accompanimental texture. Despite the “very slow” indication, there is continuous forward motion until its peaceful conclusion. The finale is marked Vif et agité, or “lively and agitated.” Like the Très lent, it remembers themes from the first movement.

Ravel’s String Quartet was premiered in Paris in 1904, and dedicated to his “dear teacher, Gabriel Fauré.” Though it was accepted immediately by the public, some of the critics’ responses were more varied. Like the judges of the Prix de Rome, some found its modernism unsettling enough to recommend significant revisions. Hearing of this, Debussy reportedly said to Ravel, “In the name of the gods of music, and in mine, do not change a single note of what you have written.”

After leaving the Paris Conservatory, Ravel was now free to explore his music without such judgment, and began to explore American jazz, classical modernism, Eastern exoticism (something that many composers, especially in Paris, were interested in at the time), along with Baroque music and neoclassicism. He also continued to incorporate elements of folk music into his work and experimented with timbre, form, and orchestration. In his book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, music critic and author Alex Ross writes, “During his brief and brilliant career, [Ravel] drew on a sizable library of folk material—variously, Spanish, Basque, Corsican, Greek, Hebrew, Javanese, and Japanese. He, too, was a phonographic listener, sensitive to microscopic details of phrasing, texture, and pulse.”

Ravel received a commission for his Introduction and Allegro “pour Harpe avec accompagnement de Quatuor à cordes, Flute et Clarinette,” in 1905, just days before he had planned to leave for a vacation with several friends. After accepting the commission, he was determined to complete the work before sailing and to spend time refining the work once aboard. In a letter to a friend, he outlines “a week of continuous work and three sleepless nights.”

Annotator Dr. Richard E. Rodda explains that unlike some other instruments, “[the harp] remained essentially unchanged in its construction until about 1810, when the Parisian piano maker Sébastien Érard introduced a system of pedals to chromatically alter the pitches of the open strings.” Érard’s instrument was in competition with the Pleyel firm’s chromatic harp, which simply added strings so that every chromatic note was represented and no pedaling was required. In an effort to shift business from the established Érard, Pleyel commissioned Debussy to write a piece for the chromatic harp, resulting in his Danse Sacrée et Danse Profane in 1904. Érard commissioned Ravel in response, and the Introduction and Allegro (1905) is dedicated to M. A. Blondel, the director of the Érard firm.

As is implied in its title, the Introduction and Allegro is in two main sections. Ravel slowly introduces material to be used in the Allegro, and explores various textures and colors, including tremolo, double-tonguing, and extensive arpeggios. Though the harp is clearly the featured instrument here, it often functions in an accompanimental role as well.

The harp takes up the melody introduced by the strings in the Allegro, before a second theme is presented by the winds. Ravel contrasts this second theme with the use of hemiola, or placing emphasis on the weaker beats in the bar. Immediately following the pinnacle of the movement, the harp takes a cadenza in which themes from the Introduction are explored further. The work closes relatively softly.

Despite the indication of instrumentation on the title page, there are many different editions and arrangements, several of which are by Ravel himself, who often conducted the work with a small string orchestra. Rodda notes, “Ravel may well have found a model for such a chamber concerto in Ernest Chausson’s Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet of 1891. He worked closely with Chausson…”

Commentator Blair Johnston describes Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, “…[it] looks forward to the raw sensuality of Daphnis et Chloé while hearkening back with great affection to the music of Chabrier and, especially, Franck.” The Introduction and Allegro was premiered in February 1907 in Paris.

Seven years later in 1914, Ravel had completed Daphnis et Chloé and turned back to the chamber music genre with his Piano Trio. He wrote the Trio very near his birthplace in the seaside town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz where he regularly spent summers. As the First World War was just breaking out, Ravel planned to join the French army, and considered the possibility that this score would therefore be published posthumously or not at all. However, he was rejected by the army due to his slight stature and weak heart. Determined to help in any way he could, he volunteered to assist medical staff and drove an ambulance.

Like the String Quartet, Ravel’s Piano Trio is in four movements. According to Annotator Jonathan Blumhofer, “Much of the music [in the opening Modéré] is informed by gestures found in folk music from Ravel’s native Basque region (he was sketching a piano concerto on Basque themes that he never finished around the same time he was composing the Trio).” Ravel especially enjoyed highlighting the contrast between the percussiveness of the piano and the sustained texture of the string parts, a difference he called “incompatible.”

Ravel titled the second movement Pantoum: Assez vif. A “Pantoum” is an old poetic form from Malaysia that uses line-breaks and repetition to recontextualize certain words. Musicologist

Derek Katz points out that it’s unlikely Ravel was concerned with this, and most likely used the title as a reference to poems by Baudelaire and Verlaine. Katz also points out that regardless of poetic inspiration, Ravel’s Pantoum is essentially a scherzo and trio.

The Passacaille: Très large that follows features a repeated eight-bar phrase introduced by the piano. A “passacaille” or “passacaglia” is a stately dance of Spanish origin over a repeated bass line. Ravel builds the movement slowly and moves directly into the Final: Animé. Annotator Dennis Bade writes, “[In the finale] Ravel unleashes his forces with vigor, demanding heroic sonorities that verge on the orchestral.