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 Seven - “Secrets of Modernity”: Irony and Style
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 have a hundred and fifty letters from Ravel… . They reveal no aesthetic or personal creed, no philosophy of art… . No disappointments, either; Nor any recriminations… . At most, some irony, and without malice.
—Roland-Manuel, 1939It is not in measuring the height of a tree that one begins to penetrate the mystery of its forest… . Clearly, one must walk around and about, throughout, and judge accordingly.
—Maurice Ravel, ca. 1931 (and ca. 1922)Now that a good bit of time has revealed the aggregate of Ravel's contributions, it would appear, clearly, that it remains of great significance… . In the end, Ravel did not compose all that much over the course of a relatively long life. And, precisely because of this, it is good to remember the words of Paul Valéry: “The true measure of an artist should be taken in view of what was not attempted.”
—Jules Van Ackère, 1957Some final associations remain between the touchstones of deception, wager, and style, and our one proposed intermediary and theoretical exemplar, inspired by Jankélévitch's text on irony alone: that of “juggling”—of what a composer might (or might not) have been negotiating, before putting into place negations that excite to this day irony's classic effect: “What? But how can this be so?!” To play the tables at Monte Carlo would be one thing, wagering notes in the concert hall quite another, as Roland-Manuel realized at the premiere of L’enfant et les sortilèges in 1926. Presaging Jankélévitch's aesthetic, he declared that of all Ravel's wagers to date, L’enfant numbered among the greatest, and upon finishing his biography (the first), he recast the idea on a larger canvas, as Jankélévitch was publishing his study of Ravel. “During my twenty years with Ravel,” writes Roland-Manuel in 1938, “[I] gathered up the secrets of modernity, the means of going against one's times, from a man of iron will, who, like most creators of enduring wealth, sought perfection less in the exceptional than in playing strictly by the rules of the game.”
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- Irony and SoundThe Music of Maurice Ravel, pp. 268 - 282Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009