By now it is a truism that Ravel's piano music is better known among performers than scholars. While pianists continue to astound audiences with their mastery of lightning-speed repeated notes in “Scarbo” or seamless double-third glissandi in “Alborada del Gracioso,” the academic's aloof intellectual response mimics little more than a disinterested yawn. The same old conundrum that hindered a serious investigation of Liszt's piano works for several decades seems also to have haunted the critical reception of Ravel's piano compositions: how can a piece that is thoroughly obsessed with its surface communicate anything more meaningful than an attention-seeking display of human prowess? With the remarkable strides that have been made in the study of Liszt's pianistic achievements, the time seems right to reevaluate Ravel's role in defining a distinctly French school of virtuosity in the realms of performance and composition.

My choice of Liszt as an opening point of comparison might seem obvious, but it is also somewhat deliberate, given the aesthetic resemblances between the two composers. These overlaps are most compelling in Ravel's Jeux d'eau (1901), one of his first major works for piano, which emulates Liszt's “Les jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este” from the Années de pèlerinage (troisième année, 1877–82). Noticeable parallels are seen on the level of musical texture, since Ravel also chose to evoke the play of water through rapidly shifting motifs characterized by a varied configuration of short rhythmic values.