Many consider Daphnis et Chloé, a symphonie choréographique in three scenes to be Maurice Ravel's greatest work. The label may not really be a fair one; there were so many different Maurice Ravels throughout his life, each with a different set of musical goals, each exploring different musical worlds, that it is not right to assign the label of life masterpiece to the top work of any one of those periods, over the top works of all the others, just because it happens to be longer, more ambitious, and easier to access. But Daphnis et Chloé is certainly one of the most colorfully, intricately, and in a very immediate, almost physical sense, beautifully scored works ever written; if one were to assign pre-eminent status to any of Ravel's works solely on the basis of orchestration, this ballet would, without a doubt, be the one selected for the honor. There may be no more skillfully orchestrated work in all the twentieth century repertoire (Stravinsky's work included) and whole shelves of orchestration textbooks could be eliminated without loss by simply replacing them with an astute examination of this score.

Daphnis t Chloé was composed between 1909 and 1912, after a commission by Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, and is a setting of a scenario adapted by Mikhail Fokine from the Greek work of the same name by Longus. It was premiered on June 8, 1912. The performance was not well prepared, and few people took note of Ravel's piece. Two orchestral suites derived from the score, however, did make a splash when Ravel brought them out just a short time after (especially the Suite No. 2, which is probably still Ravel's most often-played work).

Ravel was always far more interested in reproducing traditional musical forms and structures than he was in achieving the kind of sonic soundscapes that get rather callously lumped together as impressionist music; Daphnis et Chloé is, section-by-section, built along firmly classical lines (Ravel was extremely proud of the fact). Even the famous sunrise music at the opening of the third scene, with its scintillating thirty-second notes strewn about the orchestra and bright chirrups from the flute and piccolo flute and ecstatic, rising melody, has nothing in it that might be called progressive or even especially innovative in a technical sense, though certainly nothing written before it sounds even remotely like it. This was the essence of Ravel's genius: the ability to take the old and make it somehow sound completely new and different. Whether Daphnis et Chloé is Ravel's greatest achievement may be an irrelevant question: from the very first call of the backstage choir, distant and brought forth from an ancient world of shepherds and nymphs, to the rhythmic revelry of the final dance, it is proof on paper of Ravel's astounding capacity to fuse diverse elements into an astonishing new whole.

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