Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel was a French composer and pianist known for meticulously crafted orchestral and piano works that combine classical formal clarity with harmonic innovation drawn partly from jazz and non-Western music. His best-known piece, Bolero, builds a single melodic idea over an unchanging rhythmic ostinato through a long, continuous orchestral crescendo, while other works such as Daphnis et Chloe, the Piano Concerto in G major, and his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition display his renowned skill as an orchestrator. Often grouped with Debussy under the label Impressionist, Ravel resisted the term, favoring a more precise, structurally disciplined style than that label suggests.