Performers are slaves.

Ravel's three word rebuttal ended the disagreement about license in Paul Wittgenstein's improvisations in performing the composer's Concerto For Left Hand. Such is one of the few eruptions of actual emotion in this wonderful novel, one which drifts from joy to boredom and back through a taxonomy of detail. Such is the lovely melody before the unfortunate conclusion. Ravel's degeneration and demise is often rather painful to read, and yet there is a lyricism to such. The normal habits of the composer's day are distilled down to series of omissions and forgotten definitions. This is masterful prose and the perfect book for a Sunday. ( )

A novel that seems more like a biography, Ravel has everything within its pages that makes you want to travel and explore, want to listen to music or do something grand. The story begins letting you know how it will end, telling you exactly how long it will be until Ravel's death, but then you want more. By the very nature of the writing, you want to find out what is going to happen, even the tiny little details are made somehow magical with the style the author has used. It is good to see someone depicted as a human with flaws as well as greatness and it was interesting to see how others related to him as things happened that they could not control. A short novel that lengthens everything in just the right places, even if they are sometimes unusual ones. ( )

A charming little book about the end of Ravel's life. It's marketed as fiction, but really feels more like a well-researched biography, albeit the fact that it covers a lot of ground in a few pages. There aren't a lot of details but the details and description that are there are all the more poignant. It made me want to go find a real biography of Ravel to find out more about this curious man. ( )

This book of fiction recreates the last ten years of the life of Maurice Ravel, the composer of Bolero and Concerto in D for the Left hand. Echenoz brings to life the domestic life of Ravel in his various dwellings, and his relations with friends often fractious or diffident. Echenoz follows Ravel abroad on his trip to the United States, where he had pretty luxurious accommodations on the Steamship, France. Ravel's journeys and concert while world-winding through America are recounted. The best sections deal with his Bolero (1927) and the two concertos written almost simultaneously in 1930-31. Many catered to Ravel, and many loved him, but he never thought he was fully appreciated. He was very particular about his dress, really foppish in many ways. His decline at the end of life was rather sad. Echenoz is somewhat reflective of the Oulipo's attention to small details, although he doesn't play with them. A worthwhile read. ( )

This is, I suppose, technically a novella, but in actual fact it's more a series of vignettes or impressions: suitable, given that many of the subject's best works are episodic piano works such as Le Tombeau de Couperin and Valses nobles et sentimentales. I loved this book, not just because I enjoy Ravel's music, but because of the way Echenoz deftly weaves together minor themes -- the composer's patent-leather shoes ("without which he is nothing") and passion for very rare steaks -- with the major ones of creativity and mortality.

Echenoz chose to skim over the last decade of Ravel's life; after showing the reader the composer about to embark on a triumphal tour of the United States at the outset, he states bluntly that Ravel would live for only another decade. And the final third of the book, indeed, shows us his gradual mental and physical deterioration and the impact of frustrated creativity in a few heartbreakingly well-chosen words. The writing is sometimes jarringly vivid, as when Echenoz describes Ravel's hands ("too-short, gnarled, somewhat squared-off fingers" and "exceptionally powerful thumbs, the thumbs of a strangler, easily dislocated and set high on the palm"), sometimes laugh-out-loud witty, as when several young women, acolytes, hoist Ravel's suitcase into a first-class train carriage ("The luggage is quite heavy, but these young women are so very fond of music") or a pianist's mangling of Ravel's careful composition (he was "ornamenting phrases that never hurt a soul.")

Echenoz describes the composition of some of Ravel's latest and best-known works, including Bolero ("a thing that self-destructs, a score without music, an orchestral factory without a purpose, a suicide whose weapon is the simple swelling of sound"), but what he is really describing is the slow death of a creative genius. At first the topic is that of insomnia and Ravel's battles with it, such as his attempts to find "the best position, the ideal accomodation of the organism called Ravel to the piece of furniture called Ravel's bed". But really, sleep is a proxy for death, which also elude Ravel as his creative faculties fade. Like sleep, of which Echenoz writes "In a pinch you can feel it settling in, but you can't any more see it than you can look directly at the sun. It will be sleep that grabs you from behind, or from just out of sight", death is an elusive surcease. An impressive and beautifully-written book; I'm off to seek out more of Echenoz's work. 4.6 stars, highly recommended ( )