On March 10, 2025, La Poste issues a stamp bearing the image of the composer Maurice RAVEL on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, on March 7, 1875. He inherited the mathematical meticulousness and inventive spirit of his father, a Swiss engineer, while his Basque mother immersed him in Hispanic culture and songs.
At the Paris Conservatory (1889-1905), Ravel studied piano, harmony and composition with Bériot, Gedalge and Fauré. His very personal first works (Pavane pour une infante morte, Jeux d’eau, Quatuor à cordes) did not prevent him from failing the Prix de Rome competition five times, which would trigger the scandal in 1905 that gave rise to the “Ravel affair”. Miroirs, Gaspard de la nuit, his Valses nobles et sentimentales, his Histoires naturelles and L’Heure espagnole nevertheless distinguish him by the originality of their language, their verve, their power of expression. Manifest from the Rapsodie espagnole, his orchestral genius blossomed in Daphnis et Chloé, created by the Ballets Russes in 1912 at the Châtelet.
A volunteer, he drove military trucks near Verdun in 1916. His Tombeau de Couperin was written in homage to friends who had died for France. The Sonata for violin and cello was written in memory of Claude Debussy. Ravel, who had opposed the banning of Germanic works during the war, refused the Legion of Honour in 1920, in the middle of composing La Valse.
Settled in Montfort-l’Amaury, Ravel found success with L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (1925), for which Colette wrote the libretto, and especially with the captivating Bolero, commissioned by Ida Rubinstein, created at the Paris Opera (1928). In 1932, his Piano Concerto was dedicated to Marguerite Long, the Concerto for the Left Hand to the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Suffering from a neurological disease, Ravel could no longer compose from 1934. He died in Paris on 28 December 1937 and is buried in the Levallois-Perret cemetery.
