Book Review
May. 25th, 2011 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariMaurice Ravel
by Gerald Larner
This biography of Ravel provided a good introduction to his life and music. However, both Ravel and his music remain somewhat of a cipher to me. I do like a lot of Ravel's music, particularly his opera L'Enfant et Les Sortileges, but I've never been able to absorb it the way I do that of other composers. As I learned from this book, Ravel himself was a bit like this, too. He seemed to have a full life and to have been happy for a lot of it, yet he was also kind of aloof and did not appear to have any passionate relationships.
It was also pretty interesting to have read this book so soon after a biography of Poulenc, since he and Ravel are peripheral figures in each others' lives. Now that I've read about a few modern French composers, I'm kind of fascinated by the way they all fit together, and the picture of French musical life in the 20th century that I'm starting to form.
by Gerald Larner
This biography of Ravel provided a good introduction to his life and music. However, both Ravel and his music remain somewhat of a cipher to me. I do like a lot of Ravel's music, particularly his opera L'Enfant et Les Sortileges, but I've never been able to absorb it the way I do that of other composers. As I learned from this book, Ravel himself was a bit like this, too. He seemed to have a full life and to have been happy for a lot of it, yet he was also kind of aloof and did not appear to have any passionate relationships.
It was also pretty interesting to have read this book so soon after a biography of Poulenc, since he and Ravel are peripheral figures in each others' lives. Now that I've read about a few modern French composers, I'm kind of fascinated by the way they all fit together, and the picture of French musical life in the 20th century that I'm starting to form.
