Maurice Ravel

French composer · classical music · piano · 20th century

Musical magician. Maurice Ravel wrote music that sounds like colors and dreams, with notes that shimmer and dance in ways that make you feel like you're floating through a magical world.

Piano virtuoso. Ravel was an amazing pianist himself, which means he understood exactly what fingers could do on a piano and wrote incredibly tricky but beautiful pieces for it.

France's greatest composer. By the 1920s and 1930s, people all over the world thought Ravel was the most important living composer in France, and his music made him famous everywhere.

Rejected a label. Even though people called Ravel an Impressionist like Claude Debussy, he didn't like that label and insisted his music was something different and more precise.

Master of orchestration. Ravel had a gift for taking a simple tune and arranging it for many different instruments, making the music shimmer and sparkle with incredible textures and colors.