Composed 1902-3; 29 minutes

Debussy’s String Quartet had already redrawn the map of French chamber music when the 28-year-old Maurice Ravel turned to the genre a decade later. Studying with Gabriel Fauré but working on his own terms, Ravel completed his String Quartet in 1903. Debussy’s influence is unmistakable—Eastern exoticism, modal inflections, richly scored textures, not to forget a pizzicato second movement. Yet the voice is different: leaner, more pointed, and already unmistakably Ravel.

Both Ravel and Debussy followed Franck’s lead in using a single theme, transformed both melodically and harmonically throughout all four movements. Although generally freer in his use of the cyclical principle, with each appearance of the theme, Ravel makes subtle changes, creating a constantly shifting sound world. Critics were quick to comment on the similarity of his quartet with that of Debussy following the première March 5, 1904. They divided themselves and the followers of the composers, into two polarized camps. From this point on, the relationship of these two revolutionary French composers was to grow uneasy. Nevertheless, when Fauré criticized Ravel’s finale as a failure, Debussy was magnanimous in the way he reassured Ravel shortly before the première: “In the name of the gods of music and in my name too, do not alter a thing in your quartet." He was backed up the following month by Jean Marnold, critic for Le Mercure de France, who wrote: “A healthy and sensitive temperament of a pure musician is developing here… We should remember the name of Maurice Ravel. He is one of the masters of tomorrow.”