Rameau and Ravel

Readers who don't believe in reincarnation will have to bear with me on this one, though even they might be intrigued to see how certain patterns repeat themselves in similar circumstances.

I have long had a theory that the two French composers Jean-Phillipe Rameau and Maurice Ravel could be the same soul in two different lifetimes. Rameau (1683-1764, making him an exact contemporary of Bach) worked in the late baroque style while Ravel (1875-1937) was associated with Impressionism but, like his very different contemporary Debussy, dismissed the label, and the precision and clarity of his composing style bear him out.

So, what are the grounds for this, admittedly speculative, theory? First of all, let's look at the two men's faces. Here is Rameau.

and here is Ravel.

They're not the same but there are similarities in the features which you don't have to force onto the images. They will obviously have different genetic input to their physiognomy, but something of the inner man comes through and stamps its impression on the face as well.

However, let's put that aside. At best it's only a support to a more thorough  examination, and we do find striking musical and psychological parallels between the two men. Before we look into those, though, I should say that I do not believe all incarnations follow a similar path. Here we have a case where the same soul might follow two lives in the same place (France) and doing the same thing (music). It is expressing a developed talent. But other lives might take on totally different forms and be devoted to totally different ends in different places. The soul does not learn by doing the same thing life after life. It might follow certain paths and hone certain talents for a while but to be a rounded spiritually completed being it cannot focus on those alone to the detriment of a more holistic development. If these are the same soul, it had a mission which lasted for more than one lifetime but that doesn't mean it will be a composer, or even musical, in every life.

Both composers were obsessed with order and logic. This may be a French characteristic anyway but these two men manifested it very strongly. Rameau, decidedly a man of the Enlightenment, wrote the definitive Traité de l’harmonie (1722) which stated that music is a science governed by definite rules which "cannot be known to us without the aid of mathematics". For his part Ravel approached music with the same precision, maintaining that his compositions were put together with the "inevitability of a mathematical equation." Stravinsky even teased him about this calling him "the Swiss watchmaker" because of how the meticulous intricate way he constructed his pieces.

Both men were masters of the dance. Although he came to opera late in his career, this was the genre in which Rameau most excelled. The musical form and structure of his opéra-ballets such as Les Indes galantes were entirely derived from dance patterns which he transformed into supremely elegant rhythms while Ravel, taking inspiration from the Baroque, translated those patterns into a 20th century idiom as in, for example, Le Tombeau de Couperin (a tip of the hat to a contemporary of Rameau’s), La valse, Pavane pour une infante défunte not forgetting his tour de force Boléro.

Both men were masterful orchestrators, exceptional even among their peers. Rameau employed rich textures and instrumental colours within his operas for dramatic effect such as the depiction of primordial chaos in the overture to Zaïs. He never wrote a purely orchestral piece but his operas and ballets are full of mini-symphonies and dances in which he demonstrated his outstanding skill in manipulating colour and texture. Ravel is considered one of the greatest orchestrators in the history of music, renowned for the balance and clarity he brought to his work. Examples are Daphnis et Chloé, Boléro and orchestrations of some of his own piano works though perhaps his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Picture at an Exhibition serves as exhibit A.

 

Both men poured a substantial amount of their creativity into keyboard works. Rameau demanded strict adherence to ornamentation and approached his compositions for the harpsichord with rigorous structural logic while, in like manner, Ravel insisted on an unemotional clarity for his piano pieces in which articulation had to be clean and precise. Then they both mimicked sounds from nature in their works, for example, Le Rappel des oiseaux  and La Poule for Rameau countered by Jeux d'eau and Oiseaux tristes by Ravel.

 

Finally, and most tellingly, both men had similar character traits with each of them exhibiting an extremely fastidious detachment. Rameau was a very private man, withdrawn and introverted with frugal habits and living only for music or so it seems. For his part Ravel lived a semi-reclusive life in his country home and guarded his inner life from outsiders with a mask that saw him dubbed as cold and distant. He never married, again living only for music. Rameau did marry but only when he was 42.

 

Obviously, none of that is remotely conclusive but it is intriguing,  and Ravel with his clockwork perfection, fascination with dance and devotion to pure form fits the bill as a spiritual descendant to Rameau in a way that Debussy never could, despite his piano piece Hommage à Rameau. So maybe it was the same soul just as some have speculated G.K. Chesterton was a subsequent incarnation of Samuel Johnson and George Bernard Shaw was of Voltaire.