String Quartet (Ravel)

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 passages and ends the work vigorously.

The structure of the quartet is modelled on that of Claude Debussy's String Quartet, written in 1893, although each composer's musical ideas were strongly contrasted with the other's. Debussy admired Ravel's piece rather more than did its dedicatee, Ravel's teacher Gabriel Fauré.

Ravel had been a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but his unconventional ideas had incurred the displeasure of its ultra-conservative director Théodore Dubois and some other members of the faculty. His friend and teacher Gabriel Fauré continued to encourage and advise him, and Ravel made continual efforts to win the country's top musical award, the Prix de Rome in the face of resistance from the Conservatoire regime. By 1904 it was becoming clear to the musical public that Ravel was the outstanding French composer of his generation. Among his works by that date were the piano pieces Pavane pour une infante défunte and Jeux d'eau and 1904 saw the premieres of his orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade and the String Quartet.

The quartet has superficial resemblances to Debussy's String Quartet, written ten years earlier. Debussy approved of his younger colleague's work, and sent him an encouraging letter. Ravel's quartet is modelled on Debussy's as far as the structure is concerned, but where Debussy's music is, in Orenstein's words, "effusive, uninhibited, and open[ing] up fresh paths", Ravel's music displays emotional reticence, innovation within traditional forms, and unrivalled technical mastery. Ravel followed a direction he described as "opposite to that of Debussy's symbolism", abandoning "the vagueness and formlessness of the early French impressionists in favour of a return to classic standards."

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