A Contradictory Composer’s Spiritual Devotion to Craft

M aurice Ravel (1875-1937) was a man of contradictions: an avowed atheist and political progressive, he nevertheless set to music the poetry of the aristocrat and Nazi collaborator Paul Morand in his song cycle Don Quichotte à Dulcinée. In the cycle’s second song, “Chanson épique,” Don Quixote petitions Our Lord to bless Dulcinea:

D’un rayon du ciel bénissez ma lame

Et son égale en pureté

Et son égale en piété

Comme en pudeur et chasteté:

Ma Dame.

It’s a beautiful prayer from a professed nonbeliever. And it opens the door to Ravel’s contradictory world — one not defined by the contours of a narrow ideology, but rather by an almost spiritual devotion to craft.

In Maurice Ravel, British musicologist Emily Kilpatrick makes the case that the eponymous subject’s guiding philosophy was the exploitation and transformation of his entire spirit into his métier. For Ravel, the work itself — his was a relentless pursuit of technical perfection — was the reward. He refused all state honors, most notably France’s Legion of Honor in 1920, declaring “that artistic worth [is] not in the gift of the state, and decorations conferred distinction only upon those who lacked it.” It was a remarkable decision that one could speculate arose, at least in part, from a youthful Ravel’s five failed attempts to win the prestigious Prix de Rome — rejections that taught him that established elite institutions rarely recognize original work.

Kilpatrick helpfully outlines the inspirations Ravel drew upon from other media. “I read in a thoroughly professional manner, as if I were a writer,” he said. “The same holds true for painting: I cannot look at a painting just as an amateur, but rather as a painter.” He claims Edgar Allan Poe “as his ‘teacher in composition’” who struck the correct balance between the intellect and emotion. We also see Ravel’s painting inspirations. For example, when he praises Emmanuel Chabrier’s song “Mélancolie,” he considers it the musical equivalent of Édouard Manet’s painting Olympia. He believes both works, of different media, affect him the same way. When Ravel premieres his first opera L’Heure espagnole (Spanish Time), he speaks “of a Spain seen from the heights of Montmartre” — a reference, of course, to the famous Parisian neighborhood that was home to Pablo Picasso. It’s a thoroughly French version of Spain, in yet another contradiction.

Kilpatrick structures her biography not as a dry academic summary, but as a lively and thematic chronology. The first chapter, “The Engineer, the Basque and the Dandy” captures Ravel’s lifelong contradictions: as a composer raised by a Swiss-engineer father and a Basque-model mother, a student at the elite Paris Conservatoire but one who was expelled for producing nonconforming musical compositions, and who then recreated himself as a dandy who starts drama between Parisian musical factions as he composes and performs in the salons. In this vein, Kilpatrick points out Ravel’s alliance and friendship with the “anti-establishment” composers Érik Satie and Gabriel Fauré. Kilpatrick’s Ravel grows from eccentric bohemian to eventually become France’s premier celebrity composer, touring western Europe and the United States to the acclamation of audiences who “don’t leave me alone.”

Kilpatrick’s musical analysis is incredibly thorough, at times even revelatory. For example, she notes that Ravel’s song cycle Histoires naturelles, set to the animal poems of Jules Renard, premiered on January 12, 1907, to critical review at the Société National de Musique. Kilpatrick uses an excerpt from “Le Martin-pêcheur” (“The Kingfisher”): “Je ne respirais plus, tout fier d’être pris pour un arbre par un martin-pecheur,” to show the reader how Ravel wanted to convey a certain emotional affect. The singer is in awe because, according to the poetry, a kingfisher mistakes him for a tree and perches on him. Kilpatrick competently explains how in this tongue-twister of a line, the singer’s vocalization on the repeated r’s at a ppp dynamic causes within the listener a feeling of breathlessness. It’s a technical explanation that serves, rather than overwhelms, the audience.

But not all the book’s passages strike the right balance of technical analysis and emotionally engaging history. For example, the story of a sensitive Maurice Ravel’s enlistment as a trucker in World War I is interrupted when Kilpatrick abruptly pivots to two pages of discussion of Ravel’s 1914 Piano Trio. She offers a full paragraph dedicated to minutiae about the piece — an analysis of the Malaysian origins of the title of the piece’s second movement, “Pantoum.” It may seem like “nitpicking,” but Kilpatrick’s unexpected digression raises an ages-old question: how does a writer, musician, or other artist balance the technical with the emotional? Lean too far into technicality, and the layman tunes you out; oversimplify, and you lose the aficionado. While Kilpatrick sometimes indulges the expert, she mostly strikes the right balance.

Kilpatrick’s command of detail reflects well on Ravel’s ethos. She relies on precision and resists sentimentality — just like the subject of her biography, who famously believed in “art for art’s sake.” Her prose is elegant and her admiration of Ravel never clouds her judgment. She acknowledges the composer’s flaws — a tendency to rigidly hold to his musical ideas when collaborating with conductors and other interpreters of his works, and a cultivated aloofness taken from his dandy days — fairly and without overindulgence.

Kilpatrick’s Maurice Ravel succeeds because it mirrors Ravel’s devotion to craft, rather than delving into needless political and cultural polemics. Ravel’s consistent efforts to strive toward technical perfection allowed him to clearly express himself and thereby best serve the world of music composition; he did not approach his work with any preconceived concepts or superimposed agenda. Kilpatrick’s biography honors that conviction. Indeed, it provides a forceful reminder that the best artists rigorously maintain detachment from popular acclaim and devote themselves entirely to their craft.