Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- A Note to Readers
- Introduction
- Chapter One “Gentle Irony”
- Chapter Two Simple Sound: Ravel and “Crescendo”
- Chapter Three Opposed Sound: Ravel and Counterpoint
- Chapter Four Displaced Sound: Ravel and Registration
- Chapter Five Plundered Sound: Ravel and the Exotic
- Chapter Six Sound and Sense: Ravel and Synaesthesia
- Chapter Seven “Secrets of Modernity”: Irony and Style
- Appendix Ravel’s 1902 Prix de Rome Fugue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Chapter Three - Opposed Sound: Ravel and Counterpoint
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- A Note to Readers
- Introduction
- Chapter One “Gentle Irony”
- Chapter Two Simple Sound: Ravel and “Crescendo”
- Chapter Three Opposed Sound: Ravel and Counterpoint
- Chapter Four Displaced Sound: Ravel and Registration
- Chapter Five Plundered Sound: Ravel and the Exotic
- Chapter Six Sound and Sense: Ravel and Synaesthesia
- Chapter Seven “Secrets of Modernity”: Irony and Style
- Appendix Ravel’s 1902 Prix de Rome Fugue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
I. Counterpoint and the Academy
The history of counterpoint in French music is rich indeed, intertwined with the teaching of harmony and the larger composition curriculum at the Paris Conservatoire. Ravel's training in the late 1890s under André Gédalge provided the foundation for an elegant and imaginative contrapuntal virtuosity, the subtleties and consequences of which merit further attention. As Roland-Manuel and Alfred Cortot (among others) recognized, the art of opposed musical sounds comprised one of the most tensile stylistic threads running through all of Ravel's music. As a young student, Nadia Boulanger recalled discovering the composer of Jeux d’eau doing his exercises cheerfully, along with the others in Gabriel Fauré's composition class:
I had a surprise when I found myself in Fauré's class and discovered Ravel was there, too, doing, as I used to do then, traditional counterpoint. I was insignificant, and did counterpoint, I didn't always find it interesting, yet it seemed quite natural that Ravel should do it. I did it, he did it, we did it… . It was only years later that I realized that he had already written his string quartet, and I asked him why he was still studying counterpoint. ‘One must clean the house from time to time; I often do it that way,’ he replied.
A measure of Ravel's subsequent and enduring respect for the discipline may be divined from his responses to those coming for advice. In 1920, for instance, he asked Eugène Cools to assist an aspirant:
My dear Cools,
… Your letter is going to get me out of a problem: I have been looking for your address. Here's why: one of my compatriots—and remember, a Basque with dual allegiance—the Abbé Donostia, from St. Sebastien, came to play me some of his own compositions and ask my advice. I was afraid a bit of hearing “monastic” music—until now he has lived in a convent; but I had the pleasant surprise of discovering in him a most delicate musical sensitivity, which needs only to be cultivated. Not being able to work but intermittently, I cannot at the present time take on any more responsibilities, and I immediately thought of you. Could you let me know if this might interest you?
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- Information
- Irony and SoundThe Music of Maurice Ravel, pp. 85 - 134Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009