Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel, who was born in a Basque fishing village close to the Spanish border, came to Paris as a baby, and was taking piano lessons when he was six. In the early years of the new century he helped create the Société Musicale Independante (SMI), which then (in 1910) premiered his piano solo “Ma mère l'oye,” (Mother Goose), based on the folktales collected by Charles Perrault. This was later scored for a full orchestra and still later choreographed as a ballet. During the first world war Ravel was driving a truck as his day job, while composing “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” a suite for solo piano in six movements. Ravel died after experimental brain surgery in late 1937 and was buried at Levallois-Perret, near Paris, on December 30 that year. His best known legacy is his Boléro, a fifteen-minute orchestral work that consists of an initial theme and counter-theme repeated in a constant crescendo building to a thunderous conclusion