Daphnis et Chloé is a ballet with music by Maurice Ravel. Ravel described it as a "symphonie choréographique".
The scenario was adapted by Michel Fokine from a romance by the Greek writer Longus thought to date from around the third century AD. It concerns the love between a goatherd and a shepherdess. It is in one act and three scenes.
The work is written for a large orchestra, and includes a part for wordless chorus. When Diaghilev took the ballet to London in 1914, he omitted the chorus, which prompted Ravel to send an angry letter to The Times newspaper (see editions of June 9, 10 and 17).
At almost an hour long, Daphnis et Chloé is Ravel's longest work. He extracted music from the ballet to make two orchestral suites, the second of which is particularly popular. The full score is itself performed more often in concerts than it is staged.
Ravel wrote a number of other works which ended up as ballets. He orchestrated his piano suite Ma mère l'oye for a ballet, his famous Bolero, now a popular orchestral showpiece, was originally written as a dance piece, and he also contributed to the collaborative ballet L'eventail de Jeanne.
Indeed Samazeuilh's music resembles to a certain degree the early styles of both Ravel and Debussy - so much in fact, that one of Samazeuilh's themes from his Naïades au soir was used practically unchanged by Ravel for the theme of the Nymphs in DaphnisetChloe.
This story could very well be true since Ravel did not have a very good memory; there is a story about Ravel who at a party heard a pianist play a very nice little piece, after which Ravel with naïve sincerity asked about the composer - and it was in fact himself.
Among his chamber music there is a string quartet, a string trio, Divertissement et Musette and Pièces breves for cello.