- by Art Sulit, www.MuSeeks.com/ArthurSulit
Music Timeline Author
Maurice Ravel was also a perfectionist, but not as bad as Paul Dukas. Rather than destroy his old works, Ravel simply wrote fewer works, but all the more carefully. He took a long time to write, and that is seen in the painstaking detail of is famous 'Bolero' (over 15,000 notes) and other landmark orchestral works.
George Gershwin wanted to study under Ravel, but was refused because there was nothing more Ravel felt he could teach him. Indeed there are some similarities between Ravel's symphony and Gershwin's works--so you wonder, "Is it Ravel mimicking Gershwin, or Gershwin who later mimicked Ravel?" Well, Ravel was equally impressed by the Jazz phenomenon going on in the United States, and perhaps it was he who first elevated it into symphonic form, merged with the French and Spanish.