RAVEL MAY HAVE HAD ALZHEIMER’S

Some contemporary composers have said he had the finest ear that ever existed, but a California doctor thinks that Maurice Ravel, perhaps best known for “Bolero,” also had Alzheimer’s disease.

In the six years before he died 48 years ago, the French composer’s intellectual abilities declined rapidly, writes Donald J. Dalessio in the Dec. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

For years Ravel had trouble sleeping and might have sensed his dulled mind. A leader in the French musical impressionist movement, he wrote some of his most famous music then, including his two piano concertos.

“The concerto in G, especially the second movement, is kind of an eerie piece,” said Dalessio in a telephone interview. “I’ve often wondered if he was feeling some changes when he wrote it.”

After a minor traffic accident in October, 1932, Ravel began to show signs of senility. He was only 57.

“His mental powers began to erode noticeably,” wrote Dalessio, chief of medicine at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, Calif. He forgot names and had trouble speaking, writing and swimming.

A year later he tried to conduct a concert in Paris.

“This was to be his last performance,” Dalessio said. “He was no longer capable of the coordination, cognition, speech required to lead a major orchestra.”

He lost his ability to produce or comprehend musical sounds, to remember names, even to recognize his own music. He complained to friends of all the music that was locked up in his head.

Ravel died in Paris, Dec. 28,1937, after brain surgery.

A French neurologist, who had seen Ravel earlier and found the composer better able to understand speech rather than talk, suspected that his patient suffered from a cerebral degenerative disease, Dalessio writes. That disease, Dalessio concludes, was probably Alzheimer’s, even though only details from an autopsy could confirm that diagnosis.

“Perhaps as we listen to the strange and angular beauty of Ravel’s music, we can understand the anguish he must have experienced as he became aware that his competence was eroding,” Writes Dalessio.

“We can have greater compassion for those who bear this dreaded illness and their families.