Unmasking Ravel

by Kaminsky, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781580463379
• ISBN10: 1580463371
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-15
• Publisher: Univ of Rochester Pr

Summary

Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music, fills a unique place in Ravel studies in its combination of critical interpretation and analytical focus. From the premiere of his works up to the present, Ravel has been associated with masks and the related notions of artifice and imposture; this has led to a general scholarly perception of a lack of depth in his music and, consequently, a de-emphasis on the investigation of his musical language. This volume balances and interweaves these modes of inquiry. Part I, "Orientations and Influences," illuminates the sometimes contradictory aesthetic, biographical, and literary strands comprising Ravel's artistry and our understanding of it. Part II, "Analytical Case Studies," engages representative works from Ravel's major genres using a variety of methodologies, focusing on structural process and his complex relation to stylistic convention. Part III, "Interdisciplinary Studies," integrates musical analysis and art criticism, semiotics, and psychoanalysis in creating novel methodologies. Contributors include prominent scholars of Ravel's and fin-de-si+cle music: Elliott Antokoletz, Gurminder Bhogal, Sigrun Heinzelmann, Volker Helbing, Steven Huebner, Peter Kaminsky, Barbara Kelly, David Korevaar, Daphne Leong, Michael Puri, and Lauri Suurp++. Peter Kaminsky is professor of music at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Author Biography

Peter Kaminsky is professor of music at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Orientations and Influences
Ravel's Poetics: Literary Currents, Classical Takes	p. 9
Re-presenting Ravel: Artificiality and the Aesdietic of Imposture	p. 41
Adorno's Ravel	p. 63
Analytical Case Studies
Ravel's Approach to Formal Process: Comparisons and Contexts	p. 85
Repetition as Musical Motion in Ravel's Piano Writing	p. 111
Playing with Models: Sonata Form in Ravel's String Quartet and Piano Trio	p. 143
Spiral and Self-Destruction in Ravel's La valse	p. 180
Diatonic Expansion and Chromatic Compression in Maurice Ravel's Sonatepour violon et violoncelle	p. 211
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Deception, Reality, and Changes of Perspective in Two Songs from Histoires naturelles	p. 245
Not Just a Pretty Surface: Ornament and Metric Complexity in Ravel's Piano Music	p. 272
The child on the Couch: or, Toward a (psycho) analysis of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortileges	p. 306
List of Contributors	p. 331
Index	p. 335
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