Water music

Like his contemporary Debussy, Ravel had a supreme gift for capturing the ineffable and the elemental, a gift perhaps most evidently on display in his evocations of water — which, even as it slips through our fingers, finds itself inexorably channeled into Ravel's scores. Inspired by Liszt's Les Jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este (1883), Ravel composed Jeux d'eau in 1903, a masterful miniature that helped establish his reputation as an indelible figure of 20th-century music. More cascading arpeggios and fluid melodic lines recur in the limpid Ondine which opens Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit (1908), as well as in the contemplative Une barque sur l'océan from Miroirs (1906). See how Ravel's approach differs from Liszt's and Debussy's (in the staccato Jardins sous la pluie from Estampes, 1903).