Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music.

Clifton, Keith E.

Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music. Edited by Peter Kaminsky. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2011. [342 p. ISBN 978-1-58046-337-9. $80.00]

In a 1923 appraisal of Ravel's harmonically audacious Sonate pour violon et violoncelle, critic Emile Vuillermoz described the composer as "le musicien de tous les paradoxes" (the musician of every paradox). (1) Concealment, imposture, reserve, and even coldness have all been used to describe both Ravel's personality and his exquisitely crafted music, leading some to conclude that he privileged surface over substance. With a small output and the perpetual shadow of Debussy, more than a decade his senior, looming large, he has often received short shrift in the scholarly literature--an important figure not yet worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of great modern composers. Fortunately, attitudes have shifted in recent years with the appearance of critical editions of key works and several monographs and essay collections, written or edited primarily by British and American scholars. (2)

For the present collection, editor Peter Kaminsky and an international cadre of scholars set out to challenge old assumptions and introduce new research paradigms. Building on several overlapping "master tropes," including "Ravel as classicist," "Ravel as artisan," and "Ravel as virtuoso" (p. 2), the eleven essays (more than half largely analytical) draw on a broad spectrum of works while providing samples of current scholarship focused on specific aspects of his art. In "Ravel's Poetics," Steven Huebner surveys his diverse literary proclivities and views on classicism. Starting with Poe, whose "Philosophy of Composition" had a profound influence on the young composer, writers from Tristan Klingsor to Henri de Regnier and Leon-Paul Fargue all made their mark. Ravel's attraction to the "poete maudit" (cursed poet) trope is evident in the selection of Verlaine's doleful "Un grand sommeil noir" as one of his first song texts. Barbara L. Kelly's essay clarifies the role of Alexis Roland-Manuel--Ravel's student and first biographer--in supporting his cause and minimizing Debussy's significance. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, she reveals how early tensions regarding Ravel's fame softened into mutual respect, especially from members of Les Six.

In "Adorno's Ravel," Michael J. Puri examines Ravel-related writings by a philosopher better known for his outspoken views on Austro-German and popular music. Scattered across decades of published and unpublished texts, including a key essay in Anbruch (1930), Adorno focused on Ravel's engagement with memory and sublimation, where "negative emotion felt deeply by the artist" is transformed into "a more positive affect represented in the artwork" (p. 66). Puri reaches beyond the philosophical to uncover connections to Chopin, Johann Strauss, and Satie in the Valses nobles et sentimentales, where Ravel's "stylistic schizophrenia" (p. 70) is evident. He concludes by proposing areas for further research, including the composer's underexplored relationship to Wagner.

Part Two, the book's central section, encompasses five "Analytical Case Studies." In "Ravel's Approach to Formal Process," Kaminsky valiantly defends the composer against attacks by writers and critics (such as Charles Rosen) that he lacked innovation in this regard. After revealing formal subtleties in the Pavane pour une infante defunte and the other pavane (from Ma mere l'oye), he contrasts the Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn with Debussy's Hommage a Haydn. The essay concludes with a probing analysis of "Le gibet" from Gaspard de la nuit, one of the composer's darkest works. Correspondences between the music and Bertrand's poetry uncovers a "battle for tonal supremacy" (p. 99) that supports a circular form.

Ravel's evolving approach to sonata form and tendency to exploit competing tonal centers is the subject of Sigrun B. Heinzelmann's chapter. Focusing on the opening movements of the String Quartet and Piano Trio, and using the work of Warren Darcy and James Hepokoski as an analytical model, Heinzelmann demonstrates how the Quartet conforms to the textbook or "Type 3" model. (3) The Trio, however, exhibits a "double-tonic complex" (p. 154) with competing tonal centers of A minor and C major, resolved in favor of the latter only at the coda. As a result, the return to tonic--one of the essential tenets of sonata form--is "filtered out" (p. 173).

Daphne Leong and David Korevaar's essay explores two types of motion (mechanical and dance-like) in the keyboard music, with examples drawn from the solo repertoire and Gmajor Concerto. Boundaries between the types are often blurred, as in Ravel's subtle use of hemiola in the middle movement of the Concerto. "Scarbo" from Gaspard combines dancelike motion with tonal conflict, providing a musical analogue to the impish dwarf of Bertrand's poem. While a useful chapter, I hoped for an explication of how these ideas might inform performances of the works themselves. (4)

German theorist Volker Helbing's challenging essay (translated by Nicholas Betson) considers Ravel's use of borrowed material in La Valse, a process he calls "distancing appropriation" (p. 180). Helbing reveals Ravel's proclivity for "spiral" forms (never clearly defined) with "progressively shorter and more intense oscillations encompassing more and more registral space" (pp. 180-181). Segmenting the work into nine waltzes, he discloses the use of material reminiscent of previous composers, chiefly Johann Strauss. The chapter left several questions unanswered: how, for example, should a conductor bring out the spiral-like elements of the music and how might this knowledge inform choreographic interpretations?

Elliott Antokoletz's probing essay on the Sonate pour violon et violoncelle features a detailed form and pitch analysis of the first movement and brief comments on the fourth. He notes how Ravel's critics were shocked by the modernity of the work, which reflected an advanced use of tonality recalling Bartok. Antokoletz summarizes Ravel's synthesis of traditional and modern elements through his use of diverse pitch collections--including modal, chromatic, and octatonic--disclosing how similar procedures apply to the Hungarian composer.

One of Ravel's most challenging song sets, from both a compositional and performance perspective, is Histoires naturelles, subject of Finnish scholar Lauri Suurpaa's contribution. Using "Le paon" and "Le cygne" as case studies, Suurpaa reveals unexplored connections between Jules Renard's poetry and Ravel's music. Drawing on the work of linguist A. J. Greimas and Schenkerian theory, he considers how Ravel's evasive harmonies, non-traditional chord progressions, and creative use of register highlight textual dichotomies between illusion and reality. The florid style of "Le cygne" also maps onto the keyboard works, subject of Gurminder K. Bhogal's "Not Just a Pretty Surface: Ornament and Metric Complexity in Ravel's Piano Music." Expanding her groundbreaking research on the French arabesque, she draws on Jeux d'eau, "Ondine" from Gaspard, and "Noctuelles" from Miroirs. (5) Through a series of nuanced analyses, Bhogal contends that Ravel's ornaments trick our ears by disrupting established meter and blurring formal boundaries, creating situations where "metric stability is rarely a normative, durable state" (p. 293).

Numerous writers have detected significant changes in Ravel's postwar output, including a growing attraction to jazz, American popular music, and atonality. These elements strongly informed his second opera, L'enfant et les sortileges, subject of Kaminsky's concluding essay and a work the author has called a "veritable laboratory for Ravel's harmonic experimentation." (6) Exposing the opera as an attempt to remain current in the post-Debussy era, Kaminsky draws on Freudian theory and child psychology (especially the role of empathy in shaping morality), revealing how "issues of power and control" (p. 328) define the work. In the central duet for the child and Princess, tonal harmonies fail to cadence as expected and thus prevent the rescue of the Princess and elevation of the child to heroic status. In Freudian terms, the child returns to his first love, "Maman," whose presence is felt throughout the score via a recurring leitmotif.

Overall, Unmasking Ravel is a significant and timely collection that promises to inspire discussion, debate, and further research. Targeted toward a scholarly audience well acquainted with his life and works, most essays give limited space to historical, performance, and interpretive concerns. The book could have benefitted from a full bibliography, closer attention to musical examples and tables-some feature print so tiny as to be nearly illegible--and a concluding essay binding the diverse strands together. Although the analytical focus provides a welcome contrast to prior biographical studies, several essays challenge readers with complex prose surpassing most published work on the composer. Despite the laudable goal outlined by its title, aspects of Ravel's life and music will likely remain out of reach, never to be fully "unmasked." But French enthusiasts can take heart. This is a heady time for Ravel scholarship, and Kaminsky and his colleagues are to be commended for seizing the moment by moving us closer to understanding what makes his oeuvre so rich and alluring.

Keith E. Clifton

Central Michigan University

(1.) Emile Vuillermoz, Musiques d'aujourd'hui. Paris: Les Editions G. Cres, 1923, p. 158.

(2.) See, for example, The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, ed. Deborah Mawer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; Michael J. Puri, Ravel the Decadent: Memory, Sublimation, and Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011; and Roger Nichols, Ravel. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011.

(3.) Warren Darcy and James Hepokoski, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth Century Sonata. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

(4.) For a related article by the same authors, see "The Performer's Voice: Performance and Analysis in Ravel's Concerto pour la main gauche." Music Theory Online 11, no. 3 (September 2005).

(5.) Bhogal, "Debussy's Arabesque and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe" Twentieth-Century Music 3, no. 2 (2006): 171-199.

(6.) Kaminsky, "Ravel's Late Music and the Problem of 'Polytonality.'" Music Theory Spectrum 26 (2004): 248.