Quotes by Maurice Ravel

About Maurice Ravel:

Joseph Maurice Ravel is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and '30s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We should always remember that sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art.

Maurice Ravel

I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.

Maurice Ravel

I begin by considering an effect.

Maurice Ravel

Remember that I wrote a pavane for a dead princess, and not a dead pavane for a princess!

Maurice Ravel

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

Maurice Ravel

Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?

Maurice Ravel

My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equatio...

Maurice Ravel

For Debussy the musician and the man I have had profound admiration, but by nature I'm different from him. I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy.

Maurice Ravel

The only love affair I have ever had was with music.

Maurice Ravel

Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.

Maurice Ravel

I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.

Maurice Ravel

Author Bio

  • NameMaurice Ravel
  • DescriptionFrench composer
  • AliasesJoseph-Maurice Ravel
  • BornMarch 7, 1875
  • DiedDecember 28, 1937
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionComposer; Conductor; Choreographer; Pianist; Jazz Musician
  • WorksMa Mère L'oye; Boléro; Miroirs; Piano Concerto
  • AwardsPrix De Rome