Maurice Ravel's amusia

Abstract

In their review, Paulo Andrade and Joydeep Bhattacharya (June 2003 JRSM1) revisit the subject of Maurice Ravel's last illness. The clinical notes of his neurologist, Alajouanine,2 indicate that Ravel developed slowly progressive apraxia and aphasia in late middle life. Although the true diagnosis will never be known, since a necropsy was not performed, the clinical picture would be compatible with one of the frontotemporal lobar dementias, possibly Pick's disease or corticobasal degeneration.3 What does seem clear is that Ravel's difficulties were chiefly motoric and expressive, leaving his musical intellect largely unaffected. It has been suggested previously4 that Bolero may represent musical perseveration, or at least a waning of Ravel's musical faculties. However, Ravel was always intensely interested in the technical aspects of his art, and there is evidence from his own correspondence that he composed Bolero as a study of crescendo, ‘orchestration without music’ (some would argue he succeeded only too well). Furthermore, the two piano concertos, completed after Bolero, are both masterpieces of the genre; the slow movement of the Concerto in G, in particular, is graced by a melody of Mozartian delicacy. Ravel's timbral mastery is undisputed, but he was also a melodist of rare invention, and there is little evidence that this gift deserted him even though he was tragically deprived of the means to realize his ideas. Perhaps the last words on the subject should be Ravel's own: ‘Et puis, j'avais encore tant de musique dans la tete.’ [And yet I still had so much music in my head]