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Purloined Poetics: The Grotesque in the Music of Maurice Ravel
Fillerup, Jessie
Fillerup, Jessie
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Abstract
Since Ravel's death, both critics and scholars have questioned why a composer with his gifts would cling to convention--conservative forms, tertian harmonies--in an era of musical revolution. The grotesque, an aesthetic phenomenon characterized by unity among disjunction, engages this strand of criticism in three specific ways: 1) it provides an aesthetic framework for interpreting Ravel's diverse musical styles; 2) it offers a new context for his long-standing appreciation of Poe; and 3) it unveils transgressive elements within conventional musical structures. To differentiate the French grotesque from other varieties, I examine discourses by Hugo, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Berlioz before turning to the tales and criticism of Poe--a juncture where Ravel and the French grotesque meet. Four Ravel works--Sérénade grotesque, L'Heure espagnole, Daphnis et Chloé, and La Valse--manifest disjunctive relationships between music, text, rhythm and meter, gesture; these, combined with the works' reception histories, evoke the grotesque.
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2009-04-28
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University of Kansas
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This item contains archived web content.
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Music, Fine arts, Grotesque, Poe, Edgar Allan, Ravel