Irony and sound : the music of Maurice Ravel / Stephen Zank.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zank, Stephen, 1950-

Series:

Eastman studies in music ; v. 66.

Eastman studies in music, 1071-9989 ; [66]

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ravel, Maurice, 1875-1937--Criticism and interpretation.

Ravel, Maurice.

Ravel, Maurice, 1875-1937.

Irony in music.

Music and literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

434 pages : illustrations, music ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2009.

Summary:

What is it about Bolřo, Gaspard de la nuit, and Daphnis et Chlo ̌that makes musicians and listeners alike love them so?

Stephen Zank here illuminates these and other works of Maurice Ravel through several of the composer's fascinations: dynamic intensification, counterpoint, orchestration, exotic influences on Western music, and an interest in multisensorial perception.

Connecting all these fascinations, Zank argues, is irony. His book offers an appreciation of Ravel's musical irony that is grounded in the vocabularies and criticism of the time and in two early attempts at writing up a "Ravel Aesthetic" by intimates of Ravel.

Thomas Mann called irony the phenomenon that is, "beyond compare, the most profound and most alluring in the world." Irony and Sound, written with insight and flair, provides a long-needed reconsideration of Ravel's modernity, his teaching, and his place in twentieth-century music and culture.

Contents:

1 "Gentle Irony" 7

2 Simple Sound: Ravel and "Crescendo" 40

3 Opposed Sound: Ravel and Counterpoint 85

4 Displaced Sound: Ravel and Registration 135

5 Plundered Sound: Ravel and the Exotic 183

6 Sound and Sense: Ravel and Synaesthesia 223

7 "Secrets of Modernity": Irony and Style 268.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [391]-418) and index.

ISBN:

9781580461894

1580461891

OCLC:

213307981