Maurice Ravel. Variations on His Life and Work

Eastern Motifs in Violin Literature

“…Maurice was particularly devoted to his mother; her Basque-Spanish heritage was a strong influence on his life and music. Among his earliest memories were folk songs she sang to him 45 .The musical folklore of this rare nationality, which has an extraordinary fate, has been repeatedly used in Ravel's works. In 1903, a quartetwas written in which we see Basque elements.…”

Of Children, Princesses, Dreams and Isomorphisms: Text‐Music Transformation in Ravel's Vocal Works

“…Graph 1a provides a voiceleading reduction of the opening bars. In bars 1±3 the harmonic succession V1± V2±W±F augmented to F major 6 3 to E major 6 3 over bass pedal C ± bears little if any sense of functionality and thus is essentially undefined with respect to tonal context. Further, the instrumentation for the opening ± especially assigning the bass C4 to the flute, then taken an octave lower by viola while the cello soars above with the melody, thereby inverting their normative registers ± helps convey the lack of definition.…”

“…1c). However, F's claim to tonic status, like the poet's desire to be appointed to a higher station, is derailed in several ways: C, which would normally support a dominant seventh at a cadence, instead has the structurally weak (albeit expressive) 6 3 ; and F serves not as cadential goal but rather as passing-note to the bass E in bar 11. Musically, the revelation of F major as tonic here could represent a valid syntactical context for the tonal succession.…”

“…. (Interview, 1924) 6 Trois poeÁ mes de Ste Âphane Mallarme Â: I wished to transpose Mallarme 's poetry into music, especially that preciosity so full of meaning and so characteristic of him. (Autobiographical sketch, 1928) 7 In the context of his statement on Histoires naturelles, and of the accommodation versus appropriation models, Ravel's comments on the Mallarme songs both illuminate and obfuscate.…”