Ravel and Debussy

[miieruu]

Hi! Could you explain about Ravel music identity and characteristics and what differs his works from Debusy's?

[j_menz]

Do I smell a homework assignment we are being asked to do for you?

[stevensk]

-As J_Menz said!

..and remember, google is your friend!

[mjames]

Find out yourself by listening to their music...

[stoat_king]

This old chestnut.
I am going to assume this is for a homework assignment.

It is, of course, a trick question - the answer to which is 'they were the same composer, so there are no musical differences'.

Debussy was a notorious and very inventive practical joker, who constructed the fictional 'Ravel' as a result of a bet with a critic of the time, Pierre Lalo.
In the 1890s, Debussy met out-of-work music-hall artiste Alain Lelouche and proposed an arrangement, whereby Lelouche was to become the fictional 'Ravel' and publish some of Debussy's compositions under this assumed identity.

Michael Holroyd, in his biography of George Bernard Shaw, claims that the great author took this stunt as a primary inspiration for his celebrated 'Pygmalion'

Just read the hilarious nonsense that represents the bio of the so-called 'Maurice Ravel' on Wikipedia.
There is no such place as 'Cockaigne' and even if there was it seems unlikely that he was born on 'Rue Heureux'.
Happy Street? In the land of fairy-cakes? Really?
His father died on a loop-the-loop whilst riding a motorcycle of his own invention for the Barnum and Bailey circus?
Again, I think not.

It just goes to show that you cant believe everything you read on Wikipedia.

[chrisbutch]

Nonsense. Of course there's such a place as 'Cockaigne'. There has to be, because Elgar wrote an overture depicting it. Ergo your Wiki article is authentic, ergo Ravel existed.
ps on second thoughts I withdraw that. Michael Holroyd's Shaw biography also demonstrates convincingly that 'Elgar' was a fictional alter ego for Shaw himself, always known (like all music critics) to be a thwarted closet composer. The Cockaigne overture was thus a re-expression of the Pygmalion plot in another medium. Ergo your exposure of the 'Ravel' myth is vindicated.

[symphonicdance]

Pascal Devoyon, French pianist and professor, shared his view on Debussy and Ravel piano music in the January edition of The Pianist magazine.

"… we should not confuse Ravel with Debussy, because the two men are so different. The approach to music by Ravel is a very intelligent one, so that musicians shouldn’t put anything of his soul into his music. Everything is a piece of art like you build it little by little, and you add some effect on it – it is all very intelligent. The only thing is that, usually his sound is very thin, very precise and very transparent. So I think it’s different that of Debussy. Debussy if first, a lover of harmony, so each piece is different in its harmony, technique and colour. Each piece is a work of its own world, and he searched for the harmony that describes that. His way of playing the piano is much fuller. When he was playing on the keyboard, he always played very deep like into a cushion. His sounds are not strict, but every sould should never go away or go over a certain quantity, or else you cannot follow the harmony. If you play the piano with no harmony, all you get is a shock. The thing which Debussy is opposite to Ravel is really, freedom. Pure freedom. Ravel has more rules."