Today is going to be a sort of anti-tabloid Tuesday, because
the featured composer actually led a very secretive private life of which
little is known – and many speculate that there was little to know about.
Maurice Ravel, though mysterious in many ways, was
incredibly devoted to the creation of music, and ostensibly not much else. After the death
of his mother in 1917, he is said to never have been so fond of another living
being again.
His parents raised him in Paris where they discovered very
early that their son was musically talented. He was sent to the best teachers
and got a start in performance and moved on to composition afterwards, though
he did not fare so well on the academic side of things.
He is a man known for being solely devoted to his art. In
fact, he actually is not known to have ever had an intimate relationship with
another person. He is famously quoted as once saying “my only love affair is
with music.”
Of course, as soon as a man is not in a relationship with a
woman, many people make the assumption that he is gay – and this speculation
has been repeatedly made about Ravel, though I have not found any conclusive
evidence of his sexuality of either persuasion.
I find Ravel interesting because his secretive nature is so
unlike many public figures today; though I’ve always been fascinated by the
artists whose lives are shrouded in mystery. For instance, Frederick Phillip
Grove, Canadian author, spent a quiet second half to his life writing fiction
in Manitoba in the early twentieth century. While people thought that he was
born in North America and had led an unimportant first half of his life, this
was far from the truth.
Grove was born in Germany and after graduating from a
prestigious school, quickly became a prolific translator. He was part of a
homoerotic circle before running off with a woman to Italy, amid a great deal
of scandal. He was later charged with fraud and found himself in immense debt.
So he spent a year in jail and burned some bridges.
He was again accused of
fraud a few years later, so he and his wife staged his suicide and ran off to
America – because once you’re accused of fraud you may as well continue to
perpetrate that crime. There he soon abandoned his wife who became a model, and
he moved to Manitoba where he married a school teacher and became a well-known
writer of prairie fiction, and few knew of his scandalous origins until after
his death.
Ravel, like Grove, spoke very little about his life, and
actually insisted that he was much too devoted to his craft to even have a
private life for the public to speculate upon.
Though there have been no grand reveals about Ravel’s
private life, his entire existence was fairly mysterious. I’m not just talking
about his private life, but also his artistic process.
No one would ever have the privilege of seeing one of his
works in progress; he only revealed a work once he had put on all the finishing
touches.
The process of writing music for this composer seemed
magical. He would go on lengthy walks in the woods and across Paris, no matter what the
weather was like until he felt properly inspired, then subsequently shut
himself up for long periods of time to compose.
He once said, “It’s lucky I’ve managed to write music,
because I know perfectly well I should never have been able to do anything
else.”
Ravel was a man completely committed to his craft, and it shows
in the works he produced. You have the opportunity to see his piano concerto
performed by prodigy Jan Lisecki and the Kingston Symphony this season on
February 2nd at the Grand Theatre in Mahler Ravel & Dvorak.
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