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 demanded virtuoso pianism; Daphnis et Chloé required exacting balance. His 1922 orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition became more famous than the original. In the 1920s he grasped recording's promise early, participating in sessions of his own works despite limited skills at the piano and podium. He died 28 December 1937, having been called France's greatest living composer for a decade.