Maurice Ravel

Born 7 March 1875 to a music-loving family, Ravel entered the Paris Conservatoire and ran straight into its conservative establishment, which treated him so poorly it became a scandal. He left and built his own path: a style of sharp clarity mixing modernism, baroque, neoclassicism, and eventually jazz, always tinkering with form. A slow worker, he wrote no symphonies or church music but filled the repertoire with piano pieces, chamber works, two piano concertos, ballets, two operas, and eight song cycles — many existing first as piano scores, then as orchestrations. Gaspard de la nuit demande…