See biographies by M. Goss (1940), V. I. Seroff (1953), H. H. Stuckenschmidt (tr. 1968), A. Orenstein (1975), and B. Ivry (2000); study by R. Nichols (1977).
(born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France—died Dec. 28, 1937, Paris) French composer. At age 14 he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire. Completing his piano studies, he returned to study composition with Gabriel Fauré, writing the important piano piece Jeux d'eau (completed 1901) and a string quartet. In the next decade he produced some of his best-known music, including Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899), the String Quartet (1903), and the Sonatine for piano (1905). His great ballet Daphnis et Chloé (1912) was commissioned by the impresario Sergey Diaghilev. Other works include the opera L'Enfant et les sortileges (1925), the suite Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917), and the orchestral works La Valse (1920) and Boléro (1928). Careful and precise, Ravel possessed great gifts as an orchestrator, and his works are universally admired for their superb craftsmanship; he has remained the most widely popular of all French composers.
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Jeux d’eau is a piece for solo piano by the French Impressionistic composer, Maurice Ravel. The title often translates to “Fountains”, “Water Games”, and “Playing water” (See Jeux d'eau, water features in gardens.) The piece, a virtuosic tone-poem, is inspired by Franz Liszt (Jeux d'eau a la Villa d'Este), and also as Ravel explained:
This work is considered one of the first examples of "musical impressionism" among Ravel's compositions. At the time of writing this work, Ravel was a student under Gabriel Fauré to whom it is dedicated. Ricardo Viñes was the first to publicly perform the work in 1902, although it had been privately performed for the Apaches previously. Written on the manuscript by Ravel, and often included on published editions, is "Dieu fluvial riant de l'eau qui le chatouille... / Henri de Régnier" which in English editions is translated to "River god laughing as the water tickles him..."; this quote is from Régnier's Cité des eaux as a note that the piece is to be played lightly. To one performer who played the piece too slowly, Ravel said her waterfalls sounded sad.