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  • Integrating Incompatibilities:Melodic, Harmonic, and Formal Dissonance in Ravel's Duo and Violin Sonata
  • Jennifer Beavers (bio)

Ravel's approach to composition after the First World War began to integrate certain contemporary techniques, such as austere textures and exposed dissonance, while maintaining many of his "classical" debts, particularly his penchant for sonata form and functional bass lines. His use of the sonata design in the Duo for Violin and Cello (1920–22) and Violin Sonata (1923–27) provided him a template in which formal problems were created and worked through. As Peter Kaminsky suggests, "the problem that Ravel chooses to solve in a given work extends to and indeed is central to the formal process itself."1 Sigrun Heinzelmann likewise argues that Ravel's formal manipulations are central to his compositional process.2 Through the integration of Hepokoski and Darcy's rotational design theories with a specialized Schenkerian approach, Heinzelmann highlights Ravel's interesting approach to the sonata medium in his prewar period—most notably his String Quartet and Piano Trio.3 In part, both analysts reveal ways in which Ravel subverts expectations. For Kaminksy, Ravel's "compositional wizardry" often involves melodic emphasis, nuanced superimpositions, and form-generating [End Page 120] mottos. For Heinzelmann, Ravel's harmonic and formal features depart from the sonata model in ways that simultaneously entice and deny the listener's expectations.4

My approach extends from Kaminsky and Heinzelmann's work on formal process and combines aspects of Robert Hatten's theory of thematic markedness. In Hatten's words, "thematicization is achieved when the work makes certain material the explicit focus of its formal and expressive argument."5 The identification of a melodic, harmonic, or formal event as strategically or thematically marked allows us to examine the significance of that moment and how it plays out. My aim is to show how early moments of deception and/or dissonance in Ravel's Duo and Violin Sonata instigate critical consequences for the rest of the movement. I will demonstrate how Ravel generates salient moments within the form either by building up harmonic expectations only to deny them, or by creating surface-level dissonances that influence the formal outcome of the movement.

Both compositions present marked moments that function as structural determinants with different formal outcomes in the recapitulation (Figure 1). In the Duo, the S-theme area is initially marked with a harmonic deception that gains deeper meaning through dual-tonality in the recapitulation. In the Violin Sonata, a striking dissonance between [End Page 121] the violin and piano sets forth a series of incompatible moments that ultimately resolve in the recontextualized presentation of a new recapitulation theme. Thus, harmonic deception or melodic dissonances in the exposition become the true "problems" of each movement, and are solved on both contrapuntal and formal levels as the first movements unravel.


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Figure 1.

Marked Moments of Dissonance

There is extensive secondary literature that explores the idea of how a specific dissonance, outside note, or harmonic deception is worked out in later parts of the form; the terminology used by these analysts is appealing and in-line with the present analysis. Joseph Kerman connects chromatic intrusions in Beethoven to a "sore" note from which harmonic plans for the rest of the movement are generated.6 In hermeneutic analysis, outside pitches are often motivators of future harmonic events. For example, situated within the F-major context of Beethoven's Symphony No. 8, Charles Rosen states that the chromatic intrusion of the pitch C♯ acts as an "irritant" that is essentially responsible for the way the music builds and is immediately repressed, whereas Scott Burnham prefers to hear that note as a "musical pratfall," due to the suddenness of its appearance and disappearance into the surrounding harmony.7 Such instances, [End Page 122] in Lawrence Kramer's words, open a "hermeneutic window…through which the discourse of our understanding can pass."8

As follows, non-normative harmonic plans and musical structures can be problematized in a musical narrative that supports resolving, or even, prolonging the issue. For instance, Arnold Schoenberg refers to a "tonal problem" that disrupts the normative state of a composition; for...

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