Adam International Review 404–6 (1978)

Just over a hundred years ago (7 March 1875) Maurice Ravel was born at Ciboure on the Atlantic Coast near Saint-Jean-de-Luz. His mother was from the Basque region of his birth, while his father was of Swiss descent, but the family moved to Paris in his early childhood, and he thus became, by environment and upbringing, a Parisian. For the rest of his life he lived in or near Paris. His father was an engineer, which may well account for an element of almost mechanical precision in his music, while from his mother he inherited no doubt the Spanish flavour that is so often a feature of it. As a character, he was full of contradictions: very reserved and yet gregarious in that he loved to be surrounded by friends, a man of passionate loyalties but of seeming indifference to the larger issues in life, having in some ways a childlike simplicity yet seeking to appear a sophisticated man of the world. He was of very small stature with a head that seemed too big for his body. In everything he was out of the ordinary.

I only knew him in later life when he had shed certain affectations in evidence in younger days, and I find descriptions of him as an elegant dandy, rather unapproachable and given to sarcastic comment, not at all like the kindly middle-aged composer I knew. Unlike many great men, the more successful and famous he became, the less he would allow any trace of self-importance to show itself.