During his lifetime it was above all as a master of orchestration that Ravel was famous. He minutely studied the ability of each orchestral instrument to determine its potential, putting its individual colour and timbre to maximum use. The critic Alexis Roland-Manuel wrote, "In reality he is, with Stravinsky, the one man in the world who best knows the weight of a trombone-note, the harmonics of a 'cello or a "pp" tam-tam in the relationships of one orchestral group to another."