Deborah Mawer (Editor) - The Cambridge Companion to Ravel

The Cambridge Companion to Ravel

This Companion provides a comprehensive introduction to the life, music and compositional aesthetic of the French composer Maurice Ravel (18751937). Leading international scholars offer a powerful reassessment of this most private and elusive musician, examining his work in detail within its cultural context. Supported by many music examples, the volume explores the full range of Ravels work piano repertory, chamber works, orchestral music, ballets, songs and operas and makes illuminating comparisons with the music of Couperin, Gounod, Chabrier and Debussy. The chapters present the latest research focusing on topics such as Ravels exoticism and Spanishness and conclude by analysing the performance and reception of his music, including previously untranslated reviews. Marking the 125th anniversary of Ravels birth, the Companion as a whole aims to secure a solid foundation for Ravel studies in the twenty-first century and will appeal to all enthusiasts and students of his music.

The editor, Deborah Mawer, is Lecturer in Music at Lancaster University, where she specialises in French music (c. 18901939). She is author of Darius Milhaud (1997) and Darius Milhaud, La Cration du monde (1996), an analytical listening guide. She also writes on music analysis and education.

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The Cambridge Companion to

RAVEL

EDITED BY

Deborah Mawer

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Cambridge University Press

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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521640268

Cambridge University Press 2000

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2000

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

The Cambridge companion to Ravel / edited by Deborah Mawer.

p. cm. (Cambridge companions to music)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0 521 64026 1 (hardback) ISBN 0 521 64856 4 (paperback)

1. Ravel, Maurice, 18751937 Criticism and interpretation. I. Mawer, Deborah, 1961II. Series.

ML410.R23 C36 2000

780.92dc21 99047568 CIP

ISBN-13 978-0-521-64026-8 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-64026-1 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-64856-1 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-64856-4 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2006

Contents

Deborah Mawer

Barbara L. Kelly

Robert Orledge

Deborah Mawer

Roy Howat

Mark DeVoto

Michael Russ

Deborah Mawer

Peter Kaminsky

Richard Langham Smith

Ronald Woodley

Roger Nichols

Roger Nichols and Deborah Mawer

Contributors

Mark DeVoto , composer and writer, has been Professor of Music at Tufts University since 1981. He is the editor and co-author, with his late teacher Walter Piston, of the much acclaimed book Harmony (Gollancz, 1978; 5/1987); he has published extensively on Berg (and Bartk), including his recent edition of the Altenberg Lieder , Op. 4 (1997) for the Alban Berg Smtliche Werke .

Roy Howat is a concert pianist known especially for his expertise in French music: among his teachers were two close associates of Ravel, Vlado Perlemuter and Jacques Fvrier. His publications include Debussy in Proportion (Cambridge University Press, 1983), contributions to books on Schubert, Chopin, Debussy and Bartk, Urtext editions of music by Faur and Chabrier, and several volumes of the uvres compltes de Claude Debussy (Editions Durand), of which he is one of the founding editors.

Peter Kaminsky is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. He has published work on Schumanns piano cycles, Paul Simon, Mozart opera and score study in Music Theory Spectrum , College Music Symposium , Theory and Practice , The Instrumentalist and Clavier ; current interests include endings in Brahmss music and the role of genre in the solo music of Sting.

Barbara L. Kelly is Lecturer in Music at Keele University and author of the new Ravel article for the forthcoming second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . She researches on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French music, including Darius Milhaud, and on issues of French national identity from 1870 to 1939.

Richard Langham Smith is Reader in Music at the University of Exeter and has been admitted to the rank of Chevalier de lordre des arts et des lettres for his contribution to French music. Author and editor of several books on Debussy, including Debussy Studies (Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1998), he has also reconstructed Debussys unpublished opera, Rodrigue et Chimne , which opened the new Opra in Lyon in 1993.

Deborah Mawer is Lecturer in Music at Lancaster University and Vice-President of the Society for Music Analysis. Her research focuses on the analysis of early twentieth-century French music (18901939), including Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s (Scolar Press, 1997) and an analytical listening guide, Darius Milhaud, La Cration du monde (Teaching and Learning Technology Programme, 1996); she also writes on issues in music education.

Roger Nichols read music at the University of Oxford and subsequently lectured at various other universities before becoming a freelance writer and broadcaster in 1981. He has published widely on French music of the last 200 years, including Ravel (Dent, 1977) for the Master Musicians series, Ravel Remembered (Faber, 1987), Debussy Remembered (Faber, 1991) and A Life of Debussy (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Robert Orledge is Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool. His research fi eld is French music between 1850 and 1939 and his main publications are Gabriel Faur (Eulenburg, 1979; 2/1983), Debussy and the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 1982; 2/1985), Charles Koechlin: His Life and Works (Harwood, 1989; 2/1995), Satie the Composer