Ravel Studies

International experts present new interdisciplinary perspectives on Ravel's music, demonstrating the vibrant nature of current research on the composer.

Deborah Mawer (Edited by)

9780521886970, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 November 2010

232 pages, 5 b/w illus. 14 tables 36 music examples
25.4 x 18 x 1.6 cm, 0.63 kg

'As with the earlier Cambridge Companion [to Ravel], Mawer proves a discriminating editor, this time of a collection focused on targeted aspects of Ravel's achievement. With topics ranging from Ravel's connections to musical and literary icons through his complex relationship with American popular jazz and the tragic circumstances of his final years, there is something in these nine dense essays to appeal to most Ravel devotees … A fitting sequel to its predecessor and a welcome addition to the general literature on modern music, Ravel Studies keenly demonstrates that the composer's slender output - just under sixty major works - includes works of trenchant beauty and undeniable technical prowess that still merit close examination.' Notes

Demonstrating the vibrant nature of current research on Maurice Ravel, one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century French music, a team of distinguished international scholars provides new interdisciplinary perspectives and insights. Through historical, critical, and analytical means, the volume reveals the symbiotic relationships between Ravel's music and aesthetic, cultural, literary, gender, performance-based, and medical studies. While the chapters progress from French aesthetic-literary association, including Colette and Proust, to more extended disciplinary couplings, with American history, jazz, dance, and neurology, the organization is relatively free to enable other thematic links to emerge. The volume presents a refreshing variety of scholarly approaches to Ravel and his music, set within broad contexts and current musicological debates. In a Ravelian spirit, it is intended that the essays will serve collectively as a model for expanding the agendas of other composer-based studies.

Introduction: the growth of Ravel studies Deborah Mawer
1. Ravel's perfection Steven Huebner
2. Enchantments and illusions: recasting the creation of L'Enfant et les sortilèges Emily Kilpatrick
3. Memory, pastiche, and aestheticism in Ravel and Proust Michael J. Puri
4. Erotic ambiguity in Ravel's music Lloyd Whitesell
5. Crossing borders I: the historical context for Ravel's North American tour Nicholas Gebhardt
6. Crossing borders II: Ravel's theory and practice of jazz Deborah Mawer
7. Encountering La Valse: perspectives and pitfalls David Epstein, completed by Deborah Mawer
8. Ravel dances: 'choreomusical' discoveries in Richard Alston's Shimmer Stephanie Jordan
9. The longstanding medical fascination with 'le cas Ravel' Erik Baeck.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6]