There is probably no one in the gallery of modern composers who is more of a key figure than Maurice Ravel," writes H. H. Stuckenschmidt, the noted German critic, who has here devoted all his energies to this much revered but enigmatic giant of French music. Ravel was a composer of exquisite taste and with a complementary ability to execute his ideas. In his private life he exercised some of this same meticulousness, with the result that there has never been enough information to take the curious music-lover much beyond surface knowledge of his character and temperament. Ravel, the man of Paris, the musical spokesman for the period during which he produced his greatest works (1890 to 1932) is shown by Stuckenschmidt to be a product of two contrasting elements in his heritage: the precision and clock-like exactness that came from his Swiss father and the warmth and sensuality that were the gifts of his Basque mother. Stuckenschmidt develops this theme with great skill, offering it as the key insight into both the composer's life and his creative efforts. The author does not scant analysis, however, and he supplies detailed descriptions of all the great works: L'Heure Espagnole, Gaspard de la Nuit, Daphnis and Chloë, La Valse, Bolero, the piano concerti, and many others