Absolutely - both amazing works. How about the songs?

I agree about Valses Nobles etc, which really makes eruanto's claim that
seem hard to understand. What pieces are you thinking of, eru?

"La Valse", is a magnificent work. I just wish that Radio 3 did not neglect it so much.

I too love La Valse. Manically energetic, fantastically sensuous, and when at the end the whole fabric of it starts tearing apart with all sorts of thunderous, bottom heavy orchestration I find it utterly thrilling.

Debussy is never as badly behaved as this.

Martle! May I deconstruct a little? 

why on earth do they always get lumped together? They are like chalk and cheese (though I'm not saying which I think is which  ). Just cos they're French and broadly contemporaneous? Nonsense.

I agree. As nonsensical as Messiaen and Dutilleux and Boulez. Which is why I was being provocative in the Debussy thread!

...the sonic life of the music is more structurally conceived (audibly so). The witholding of the brass in the first movement of La Mer, for example, until the very end is a planned orchestrational idea. I suspect Ravel would have bunged in any old combo of instruments that suited the moment.

No!!! Ravel sometimes takes the passing of material from instrument to instrument to extremes but he is brilliant at holding back to the last moment (Mother Goose springs to mind.) (I do agree that there's little in ANY orchestral piece to rival that moment in La Mer, however!)

String quartets: Debussy, hands down.

For me it's the Faure that really hits the spot! hehe!!! I've never really taken to either D's or R's.

Daniel: I love your description of La Valse. And I think it is a significant part of Ravel's nature to press the self-destruct button in so many of his pieces. People don't usually associate him with violence and nastiness but there are so many pieces that have a dark underside crawling with unspeakable repulsiveness... (a compliment, by the way...) For me, the end of the LH Piano Concerto is the musical equivalent of George Orwell's jackboot crushing a human face.

I think the Debussy String Quartet is admirable, but nowhere near his strong suit. The Ravel quartet is, to me, much like the duo or the piano trio in that it shows a side of Ravel we don't see anywhere else, but it's not his best side either. Then again, the pizzicato-saturated 2nd movement is pretty impressive.

Leaving aside the probably fatuous question of which is the 'greater' composer, I think their differences are interesting, and revealed as much as anywhere in their piano outputs. Ravel's piano music seems to me to belong unequivocally to a 'tradition' of pianism trailing back through Liszt to Chopin - and, notwithstanding its exquisite and elegant formulations, is essentially conservative in this respect. Debussy's, on the other hand, although starting from a similar position, evolved into something far more suggestive and 'modern': the textural and timbral innovations he brought to his writing for the instrument were light years beyond 'novelty': they are often as structurally significant and active as melody or harmony, and in this respect D can be seen as by far the more forward-looking composer (something Boulez understood with a passion). That's not a value-judgement of course.

Tommo, I'd agree about Mother Goose! Just about 'perfect' in every way. 

I don't believe those "others" have composed a lot of impressive music, Richard.

Personally I think the musical innovations of Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg were inevitable and necessary (if it is possible to call something "necessary" in art).