Maurice Ravel

Ravel wrote slowly and published little, and almost everything he finished is short. He worked at the level of the individual chord and the individual instrument, and he revised until the effect was exact. Stravinsky's description of him as a Swiss watchmaker was meant as a jab, but it describes the music well.

He is usually grouped with Debussy as an impressionist, and the two do share a harmonic vocabulary: added notes, parallel chords, scales other than major and minor. The difference is in the outline. Debussy lets a phrase dissolve; Ravel keeps a clear beat, a clear cadence and often a dance rhythm underneath, so the shape stays visible however rich the surface gets.

Much of his piano writing treats the instrument as an orchestra, with layers that have to be balanced rather than simply played. Jeux d'eau is the first piece where he does this: the tune sits inside a spray of notes that has to stay quieter than it.