Ravel: Chamber Works
View all works by Ravel in the main appExplore the complete catalog of Chamber compositions by Ravel. This curated list includes composition years, historical Wikipedia context, and interactive audio to add specific tracks directly to your listening queue.
| Title | Year | Actions |
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| Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré, for violin and piano |
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abilities in orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' piano music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known. A slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies or church music. Many of his works exist in two versions: first, a piano score and later an orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance. Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public. From the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works; others were made under his supervision. |
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| Cello Sonata |
The Sonata for Violin and Cello (French: Sonate pour violon et violoncelle) is a composition written by Maurice Ravel from 1920 to 1922. He dedicated it to Claude Debussy, who had died in 1918. It premiered on 6 April 1922 with Hélène Jourdan-Morhange playing the violin and Maurice Maréchal the cello. It is in the key of A minor, with the fourth movement in the relative major key of C. It is M. 73 in the catalogue compiled by Marcel Marnat. |
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| Introduction et Allegro, for flute, harp, clarinet, and string quartet |
Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet (Introduction et allegro pour harpe, flûte, clarinette et quatuor) is a chamber work by Maurice Ravel. It is a short piece, typically lasting between ten and eleven minutes in performance. It was commissioned in 1905 by the Érard harp manufacturers to showcase their instruments, and has been described as a miniature harp concerto. The premiere was in Paris on 22 February 1907. The work has been arranged for piano and for large orchestral forces but the version for seven instruments is usually performed, and has been recorded many times. Harpists who have featured in recordings include Lily Laskine, Nicanor Zabaleta, Osian Ellis, Markus Klinko, Lavinia Meijer and Marie-Pierre Langlamet. |
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| Kaddish, for violin and piano |
David Leo Diamond (July 9, 1915 – June 13, 2005) was an American composer of classical music. He is considered one of the preeminent American composers of his generation. Many of his works are tonal or modal. His early compositions are typically triadic, often with widely spaced harmonies, giving them a distinctly American tone, but some of his works are consciously French in style. His later style became more chromatic. |
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| Piano Trio in A minor |
Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio for piano, violin, and cello is a chamber work composed in 1914. Dedicated to Ravel's counterpoint teacher André Gedalge, the trio was first performed in Paris in January 1915, by Alfredo Casella (piano), Gabriel Willaume (violin), and Louis Feuillard (cello). A typical performance of the work lasts about 30 minutes. |
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| Pièce en forme de Habanera, for violin and piano |
This is a complete list of compositions by Maurice Ravel, initially categorised by genre, and sorted within each genre chronologically in order of date the composition was completed. Catalogue "M" numbers were assigned by the musicologist Marcel Marnat according to date of composition. Arrangements by Ravel of his own works were assigned the "M" number of the original followed by a letter (a, b, c, etc.). Arrangements by Ravel of other composers' works or of "traditional" music were assigned a separate "MA" number, in order of date of arrangement. |
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| Sonata for Violin and Cello |
The Sonata for Violin and Cello (French: Sonate pour violon et violoncelle) is a composition written by Maurice Ravel from 1920 to 1922. He dedicated it to Claude Debussy, who had died in 1918. It premiered on 6 April 1922 with Hélène Jourdan-Morhange playing the violin and Maurice Maréchal the cello. It is in the key of A minor, with the fourth movement in the relative major key of C. It is M. 73 in the catalogue compiled by Marcel Marnat. |
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| String Quartet in F |
Maurice Ravel completed his String Quartet in F major in early April 1903 at the age of 28. It was premiered in Paris in March the following year. The work follows a four-movement classical structure: the opening movement, in sonata form, presents two themes that occur again later in the work; a playful scherzo second movement is followed by a lyrical slow movement. The finale reintroduces themes from the earlier movements and ends the work vigorously. The quartet's structure is modelled on that of Claude Debussy's String Quartet, written in 1893, although Ravel's musical ideas strongly contrast with Debussy's. Debussy admired Ravel's piece rather more than did its dedicatee, Ravel's teacher Gabriel Fauré. |
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| Tzigane: Rhapsodie de concert, for violin and piano |
Tzigane is a rhapsodic composition by the French composer Maurice Ravel featuring a virtuosic violin part. The original instrumentation was for violin and piano (with optional luthéal attachment). The first performance took place in London on 26 April 1924 with the dedicatee, Jelly d'Arányi, on the violin and Henri Gil-Marchex at the piano. In his biographical sketch of 1928 Ravel termed it a rapsodie de concert, as "a virtuoso piece in the style of a Hungarian rhapsody". It consists of "a string of successive variations juxtaposed without development". |
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| Violin Sonata no. 1 in A minor, "Posthumous" |
The Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1 by Maurice Ravel, known also as Sonate posthume, is the composer's earliest instance of a sonata for this combination of instruments. Though it was composed 30 years before the publication of his second violin sonata, it was not published until 38 years after his death. |
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| Violin Sonata no. 2 in G |
Maurice Ravel's Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano was composed from 1923 to 1927; it was inspired by forms of American music such as jazz and blues. This work was the only violin and piano sonata published during Ravel's lifetime; the existence of the first violin sonata (Sonate posthume) only came to be known long after Ravel's death. For that reason this sonata was, and still often is called Ravel's "Violin Sonata" or "Violin and Piano Sonata" without numbering. |