The piano music of Maurice Ravel is among the most thrilling the most colorful and for pianists the most challenging of the repertoire. This book is about how performers and listeners can discover it and relate to it ä how it sounds and feels under the fingers and within the receptive imagination. But to write about those experiences to explore the background influences and impulses behind Ravel's music is to be engaged in a form of biography. Discovering the delicate melancholy of the ÊPavaneÊ and the ÊSonatineÊ the astounding virtuosity of ÊGaspard de la nuitÊ and the exotic tone painting of ÊMiroirs (Reflections)Ê leads to the question Who was the extraordinary person who created this? ÞHere are indispensable insights into the literary origins of ÊGaspard de la nuitÊ the derivation of the water imagery in ÊJeux d'eauÊ and the sensuous delights of ÊMiroirsÊ. The chapter on ÊValses nobles et sentimentalesÊ illuminates Ravel's meticulously controlled sense of irony. ÊLe tombeau de CouperinÊ is related to the impact of the First World War on his psyche and to the refuge he sought in the civilizing values of the age of Watteau and Couperin. Intimate and perceptive ÊReflectionsÊ is inescapably about the life of Maurice Ravel ä reflections by way of the piano music on an exceptionally private but immensely attractive man.