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.
- Provides detailed but accessible musical analyses, supported by informative music examples
- Makes association with relevant French literature - readers can access the French literary connections in English translation, with the original French also included for those who want to refer to it
- Presents a wide variety of scholarly approaches to Ravel, placing his music within a broad context
Read more
Reviews & endorsements
'Ravel Studies is an outstanding addition to the Ravel literature and offers aficionados of French music, students, musicologists and sophisticated music lovers a series of concise, yet in-depth and thoughtful essays about the music, life and times of this great master. Libraries with collections in these subject areas will also want to purchase the book. Highly recommended.' Music Media Monthly
'Subjecting popular music to academic techniques is dangerous territory but Deborah Mawer, with her intensive knowledge of the field, provides convincing analyses of the two jazz-inspired piano concertos and the violin and piano Sonata in 'Ravel's theory and practice of jazz', which well explains the composer's belief in its value for classical composers as embodying the modernist age, as well as relating to larger questions of national identity.' Musical Times
'As with the earlier Cambridge Companion [to Ravel], Mawer proves a discriminating editor, this time of a collection focused on targeted aspects of Ravel's achievement. With topics ranging from Ravel's connections to musical and literary icons through his complex relationship with American popular jazz and the tragic circumstances of his final years, there is something in these nine dense essays to appeal to most Ravel devotees … A fitting sequel to its predecessor and a welcome addition to the general literature on modern music, Ravel Studies keenly demonstrates that the composer's slender output - just under sixty major works - includes works of trenchant beauty and undeniable technical prowess that still merit close examination.' Notes
See more reviews
Customer reviews

17th Oct 2024 by UName-880714
It is a good book that I have never seen before. thanks

Log in to review

Review was not posted due to profanity
×

, create a review

(If you're not , sign out)

Please enter the right captcha value

Please enter a star rating.

Your review must be a minimum of 12 words.

How do you rate this item?

Reviews must contain at least 12 words about the product.

×

Product details
- Date Published: March 2017
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781316642979
- length: 234 pages
- dimensions: 244 x 171 x 15 mm
- weight: 0.42kg
- contains: 5 b/w illus. 14 tables 36 music examples
- availability: Available
Table of 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.
Look Inside
Editor
Deborah Mawer, Lancaster University
Deborah Mawer is Reader in Music within the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University. Her books include The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: Creation and Interpretation (2006), Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s (1997), and The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (2000). Her articles and reviews on varied topics have appeared in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Twentieth-Century Music, Music and Letters, Opera Quarterly, Music Theory Online, and the British Journal of Music Education, as well as in essay collections on French music.
Contributors
Deborah Mawer, Steven Huebner, Emily Kilpatrick, Michael J. Puri, Lloyd Whitesell, Nicholas Gebhardt, David Epstein, Stephanie Jordan, Erik Baeck