Ravel Studies (review)

The music of Maurice Ravel seems to be everywhere these days. Excerpts from the String Quartet and Boléro accompany television commercials for ancestry.com and Burger King, his chamber works (chiefly the 1914 Trio) formed the soundtrack for the French art film Un coeur en hiver, and more than 5000 separate Ravel clips are available for instant viewing on YouTube. Gradually emerging from Debussy's shadow to assume his rightful place in the pantheon of modern French composers, Ravel's rise in the popular imagination is accompanied by a proliferation of high-quality scholarship in the wake of the indispensible Cambridge Companion to Ravel (edited by Deborah Mawer [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], reviewed in Notes 58, no. 3 [March 2002]: 590-93). Several new monographs and scholarly editions promise to expand further our understanding of the composer and his music (see, for example, Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music, edited by Peter Kaminsky [Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2011]; Roger Nichols, Ravel: A Life [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011]; Michael J. Puri, Ravel the Decadent: Memory, Sublimation, and Desire [Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press]; and new Urtext editions of the piano music edited by Roger Nichols for Edition Peters).

As with the earlier Cambridge Companion, 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. Steven Huebner begins by examining the "eyebrow-raising" (p. 10) frequency of references to perfection in critical discourse surrounding Ravel's music, especially during his lifetime. Building on the composer's 1928 comment that "my goal is technical perfection" (p. 26), he traces the concept from Aristotle through eighteenth-century German philosophers including Kant and Alexander Baumgarten, concluding that Ravel's quest provides a notable point of contrast with contemporaries Debussy and D'Indy. While Huebner provides a lucid summary, I wished for deeper connections to the music, especially concerning Ravel's adoration of Mozart—whom he once described as "the most perfect of all" (p. 27)—and how this may have influenced selected compositions.

The complex genesis of Ravel's second opera L'enfant et les sortilèges and his multifaceted relationship with librettist Colette is the subject of a revealing chapter by Emily Kilpatrick. Deftly correcting several misconceptions regarding their work on the opera, she argues convincingly that the two viewed themselves as genuine collaborators even though they worked mostly independently (photographs of Alphonse Visconti's set designs for the original 1925 production lend welcome support to her commentary). Kilpatrick also connects Ravel's text setting in Enfant to his early choral work Trois Chansons, demonstrating how both contain imaginative examples of "onomatopoeic soundscapes" (p. 44).

In "Memory, Pastiche, and Aestheticism in Ravel and Proust," Michael J. Puri ties Marcel Proust's fascination with memory and the moment bienheureux (felicitous moment) to selected moments in Ravel's music. Although no record of any interaction survives, the two shared several personality traits, not to mention Proust's brief reference to Ravel's music in volume 3 of À la recherche du temps perdu. Since both prized the imagination and "shared an interest in pastiche" (p. 60), Puri reveals congruences between the introduction to Daphnis et Chloé and the famous "madeleine" scene in Recherche (he also uncovers parallels between Bordodin's Prince Igor and the piano work A la manière de . . . Borodine). Puri's intriguing ideas—presented here in succinct form—will no doubt be explored in greater depth in his forthcoming book.

Ravel's ostensibly nonexistent romantic life remains to this day a puzzling enigma. Since he never married and carefully guarded his privacy, several interpretations have been advanced, including the possibility that he may have been asexual or even homosexual. Building on his...