Beard of the Week XLVIII: Father of the Composer
The week's beard belongs to Pierre Joseph Ravel* (1832-1908), father of the composer Maurice Ravel. As I started this entry I was listening to the concluding movement of Ravel's "Trio for Piano, Violin, and Violoncello", surely one of the most sumptuous sounding pieces I can think of–it's amazing the sound that these three instruments can make at the bidding of a master of color and invention like Ravel, the son. (Listen in the footnote†) What a marvelous BoW Maurice Ravel would make, I thought, if only he had had a beard. Alas, I had never seen a photograph of Ravel where he was other than clean shaven. So, we finesse the situation with the discovery that Joseph Ravel, his father, did have a beard.
About this image we are told (link):
The portrait by Marcellin Desboutin, painted in 1892, and now to be seen at Ravel's house Le Belvédère, shows an imposingly bearded face with grave features.
All true, perhaps, but the look to me is more akin to early photographs of people who didn't really know what to do while having their portrait taken. Looking grave was often the default look.
As we learn from the biographical sketch of Joseph Ravel at maurice-ravel.net, Ravel the father sounded plenty interesting enough anyway. Joseph was born in Switzerland, grew up to be an engineer, and moved to France when he was in his twenties. Occasionally he worked in Spain on railway engineering, and it was in that country that he met Marie Delouart, a French woman from the Basque region of France. They were married when Joseph was forty; Maurice was born in the following year.
Joseph finally ended up getting involved with the early development of internal-combustion engines. He apparently had mixed success as an inventor. Later he seems to have found a stable livelihood as a manufacturer of motors. Grave though he may have been, in the portrait at least, we're told that he had some aptitude at music and supported his son's early efforts [source]:
Though Pierre Joseph Ravel made a living as a civil engineer and an inventor, working mostly in the early automobile industry, he loved music and supported his eldest son’s ambitions. Maurice began piano lessons in 1882 at the age of seven, and he soon also showed an aptitude for composition.
Could Joseph have been entirely grave and without humor when his most famous invention was a circus act? I like how it's described in this sentence from Wikipedia on Maurice Ravel:
Some of Joseph's inventions were quite important, including an early internal-combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death," an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a hit in the early 1900s.
To end on a romantic, fanciful note, perhaps it was from his father that Maurice Ravel got his incredible flair for inventiveness, albeit with music rather than machines.
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* Sometimes written "Pierre-Joseph", but it seems he preferred just "Joseph".
† The Trio is in a minor and has four movements: I. Modéré II. Pantoum (Assez vif) III. Passacaille (Très large) IV. Final (Animé) It's all fabulous but the fourth movement I find spine-tingling. If you have the four minutes and 47 seconds to spare, here's an electrifying performance of the fourth movement by the Beaux Arts Trio: