La maison et le jardin de Maurice Ravel à Montfort-l’Amaury (Yvelines)

Abstract

The house and the garden of Maurice Ravel at Montfort-l’Amaury (Yvelines) bear witness to the personality of the composer who lived there. More generally, they represent a place of memory associated with French music and French arts at the beginning of the twentieth century. For specialists, they constitute a real exhibition about the artist. The house and its garden are filled with souvenirs, dreams and music that make them all the more interesting, a remarkable universe which subjugates all the visitors. The design of the garden, with its water features, its herbaceous borders and its Japanese-style atmosphere, refers to numerous works by the composer. It is a good example of a garden which was an inspiration for a composer’s works, but also of a garden inspired by music. This article offers new information about the garden’s design, rarely considered up to now, and can attribute this design to Lucien Paré, a landscape architect and horticulturalist trained at the Versailles landscape school. His teaching has recently been the object if renewed study. The house has been awarded the label ‘Maison des Illustres’ and, with the garden, was given statutory protection in 2022.

Keywords

• garden
• Montfort-l’Amaury
• Art Deco
• music
• house
• Maurice Ravel