"Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second."
Maurice Ravel
(20Th-Century Composers - Gerald Larner
)
He is remembered in the United States primarily for the rather banal repetitions of Bolero, but Maurice Ravel wrote a great deal of music more worthy of celebration: ballets like Ma Mere l'Oye (Mother Goose) and Daphnis et Chloe; orchestral and piano works like Pavane pour une Infante Defunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) and the Rapsodie Espagnole; operas like L'Enfant et les Sortileges (The Child and the Enchantments); and settings of Greek and Jewish songs. British author and critic Gerald Larner offers a well-researched, well-written, accessible biography of Ravel's life and compositions that explores his music and his motivations, a part of the Phaidon Press Limited 20th Century Composers series.
The Cambridge Companion to Ravel
(Deborah Mawer(Editor)
)
This recent addition to Cambridge University Press's companions to the great composers offers an often illuminating overview of the life, work, and concerns--including piano, ballet, and exoticism--of Maurice Ravel. Contributors include Robert Orledge, Mark DeVoto, and Deborah Mawer, among others; the essays focus on Ravel's aesthetic, his polymorphous musicality, and his performance styles and reception.
