Cimetière de Levallois-Perret

Not every Parisian of artistic fame is buried in the four cimetières where tourists throng.

Paying my respects at the tomb of Gustave Eiffel, even if just virtually, is on my to-do list this weekend.  After all, he not only designed the awe-inspiring thousand foot Parisian tower but he also engineered the internal structure supporting Bartholdi’s masterpiece, Liberty Enlightening the World! 

I found his grave, at Cimetière de Levallois-Perret.

One other Parisian of artistic fame is also buried there. (Theirs are the two “famous” graves on that cemetery’s roll call . . .)  My first connection to him is from the long-ago days of “vinyl” music.  I still have that collection, recordings themselves of original player piano rolls . . .  My favorite among them is Maurice Ravel playing Maurice Ravel . . .  My second connection is to a very special selection from that recording: “Pavane for a Dead Princess.”  I’m not sure I’ve ever known to whom that piece was dedicated . . . but my clarinetist middle child, Michelle, chose to learn and to play that infinitely sad, yet infinitely beautiful, selection in a competition years ago.  “Pavane” is, for her, what Galway’s version of Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” is for her sister, in my memory of those days in which our home was filled with their music-making . . .

Gustave and Maurice, you have blessed my life.  Resquiat in pace!