Full Description
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.
Contents
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.
