{"id":7849,"date":"2026-08-02T15:08:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/?p=7849"},"modified":"2026-08-02T15:08:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:08:27","slug":"basque-fact-of-the-week-composer-maurice-ravel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/2026\/08\/02\/basque-fact-of-the-week-composer-maurice-ravel\/","title":{"rendered":"Basque Fact of the Week: Composer Maurice Ravel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m a metalhead. I like my music loud, aggressive, and angry. However, I have a soft spot for anything Basque, including Ravel. Perhaps the only classical CD I&#8217;ve ever owned was a compilation of some of Ravel&#8217;s greatest pieces, including <em>Bol\u00e9ro<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-medium\"><a href=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-70.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" src=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-70-300x180.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7851\" srcset=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-70-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-70-1024x614.png 1024w, https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-70-768x461.png 768w, https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-70-1536x922.png 1536w, https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-70-2048x1229.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Maurice Ravel sitting at his piano with his ever-present cigarette in hand. Photo found on <a href=\"https:\/\/thelistenersclub.com\/2012\/08\/04\/the-listeners-club-ravels-bolero\/\">The Listener&#8217;s Club<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Joseph Maurice Ravel was born in the Basque village of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ciboure\">Ziburu<\/a> (Ciboure in French), in the province of Lapurdi, on March 7, 1875. His father, Joseph, was a Swiss engineer. His mother, <a href=\"https:\/\/maurice-ravel.net\/mother.htm\">Marie Deluarte<\/a> or Delouart, was from Ziburu herself though she grew up in Madrid. Shortly after Maurice was born, the family moved to Paris.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>When Maurice was 14 years old, he entered the Paris Conservatory. He had begun playing the piano when he was 7, which was a talent cultivated by his father. Indeed, his father had been a pianist himself and had even attended the Conservatory in Geneva before deciding on a career in engineering. Maurice began taking piano lessons with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Henri_Ghys\">Henri Ghys<\/a> and a few years later began studying harmony with Charles-Ren\u00e9. His earliest compositions date from this time.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ravel won the Conservatory&#8217;s piano contest in 1891. Other students outshone him as a pianist but he really started to grow as a composer. However, he was a student that marched to his own beat and didn&#8217;t take lessons well. In 1895, he was expelled from the Conservatory, after which he focused on composing. A few years later he was readmitted to the Conservatory where he studied composition with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gabriel_Faur%C3%A9\">Gabriel Faur\u00e9<\/a>. However, he ran afoul of the director of the Conservatory and was again expelled in 1900.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The first few performances of his compositions were met with mixed reviews. However, Ravel genuinely only cared about one critic &#8211; himself &#8211; and so these did nothing to dissuade him in his endeavors. From 1901 to 1905, Ravel competed for the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Prix_de_Rome\">Prix de Rome<\/a>, the top prize for young composers, but never won. The last year he competed, he was eliminated in the first round, which caused a scandal and led to significant reorganization of the Conservatory. His first concert outside of France, in 1909 in London, was received favorably.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ravel&#8217;s first opera debuted in 1911. Its theme &#8211; a bedroom farce &#8211; was only moderately well received by the opera-going public but it gained more popularity in the 1920s. A year later, he had three ballets debut. One was met with outstanding success but others had a more mixed reception.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A few years later, World War I broke out. Ravel tried to join the French Air Force but was rejected because of his age and a small heart issue. At the age of 40, he was finally admitted as a truck driver. Amongst other duties, he delivered munitions during German bombardments. His health, already less than ideal due to hard work on his compositions, declined further as he suffered from both insomnia and digestive issues and, later, frostbite. His health, both mental and physical, deteriorated further when his mother died in 1917.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>As some in France responded to the war by wanting to ban performances of German music, Ravel objected that it would lead to isolation of French musicians. In response, his own music was banned.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After the war, Ravel continued composing though his output diminished to roughly one piece per year. During this time, he started incorporating elements of jazz into his pieces as well. At the end of the 1920s, he composed his most famous piece, <em>Bol\u00e9ro<\/em>. It was well received, partially to Ravel&#8217;s chagrin as he claimed it had &#8220;no music in it.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In the early part of the next decade, he wrote a piece for pianist\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Wittgenstein\">Paul Wittgenstein<\/a> who had lost an arm in the war. The piece was written for just one hand and became regarded as a great work.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 1932, Ravel was in a taxi accident where he damaged his head. He had already been experiencing memory issues and this injury exacerbated them. He stopped composing. After a failed surgery to try to alleviate the symptoms, Ravel died on December 28, 1937.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In all, Ravel composed some 85 pieces, several unfinished or incomplete. One of those was a <a href=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/2019\/08\/04\/basque-fact-of-the-week-ravel-began-but-never-finished-a-basque-themed-concerto\/\">concerto with Basque themes<\/a>, a reflection of the influence his mother had on his life and imagination. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>While Ravel declined all state honors from France, he did accept a number of foreign awards, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford. After he died, his brother \u00c9douard turned Ravel&#8217;s country home into a museum, which still operates today.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background wp-block-paragraph\">A full list of all of Buber&#8217;s Basque Facts of the Week can be found in the <a href=\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/basque-fact-of-the-week-archive\/\">Archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Primary sources: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Maurice_Ravel\">Maurice Ravel<\/a><\/em>, Wikipedia; Mazorra Incera, Luis;\u00a0<em>Ravel Deluarte, Maurice<\/em>. Au\u00f1amendi Encyclopedia, 2026. Available at: <a href=\"https:\/\/aunamendi.eusko-ikaskuntza.eus\/en\/ravel-deluarte-maurice\/ar-124708\/\">https:\/\/aunamendi.eusko-ikaskuntza.eus\/en\/ravel-deluarte-maurice\/ar-124708\/<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/maurice-ravel.net\">Maurice-Ravel.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m a metalhead. I like my music loud, aggressive, and angry. However, I have a soft spot for anything Basque, including Ravel. Perhaps the only classical CD I&#8217;ve ever owned was a compilation of some of Ravel&#8217;s greatest pieces, including Bol\u00e9ro. A full list of all of Buber&#8217;s Basque Facts of the Week can be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[836,6,19],"tags":[1407,4295,4294,4292,4296,1271,1416],"class_list":["post-7849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basque-fact-of-the-week","category-music","category-people","tag-bolero","tag-joseph-ravel","tag-marie-deluarte","tag-maurice-ravel","tag-paris-conservatory","tag-world-war-i","tag-ziburu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-70.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2sYNu-22B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7849"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7852,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849\/revisions\/7852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}