Edito de À la Manière de Borodine (1913)"No, this is not going to be what you think: you will not find La Marseillaise in it, but instead you will find a Forlane and a Gigue; no Tango either". Those were the words of Maurice Ravel on 1 October 1914, writing to Roland Manuel about his last piano composition, ?Le Tombeau de Couperin?. This six-movement suite is dedicated both to François Couperin and to Ravel? s friends who had been killed in World War I. In this work, old dance forms are restored to life, and the music is characterized by grace, charm, order, and moderation. The unusual movement is the Fugue, a form which is seldom found in earlier suites. The two framing movements - Prélude and Toccata - evoke the harpsichord technique of the 18th century. In the Forlane, the melodic leaps and strange chords catch one?s attention, in the central part of the Rigaudon the rustic melody provides a contrast with the cheerful main section. The Menuet, which differs fundamentally from the Menuet in the Sonatine, is melancholy, with a central Musette of pastoral quality; the close already sounds a little jazzy. The later orchestral version of the suite omits the Fugue and Toccata. Ravel was as moved by the clarity of scientific thought, exemplified by Pythagoras and Archimedes, as he was by the concept of a fourth dimension. He gave expression to this kaleidoscope of widespread interests in his music. All too often he is simply classified as a ?French Impressionist?. But that, of course, is only partly correct. His father was Swiss and his mother was of Pyrenaean Basque extraction. Surely this is why there are so many elements of Spanish folklore in his music. Ravel was also very taken with Russian and Greek folklore, and many elements of this music were assimilated into his own work. He was only partly an impressionist, for example in ?Gaspard de la Nuit?, or in ?Miroirs?. All of his other piano works can be placed in different categories. For example, the Sonatine is a late-romantic work with great outbursts of emotion; in ?Le Tombeau de Couperin?, Ravel makes use of the musical language of the 16th century. Another mistake is that of constantly comparing Ravel with Debussy. In this context, Debussy?s works, with their constantly iridescing emotional states, barely confined by formal rules, are totally different from Ravel?s compositions, where the details, intellectual clarity, and form generally control the emotions. This special language makes his music so individual: introverted, elegant, tasteful, intelligent, measured.