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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zank, Stephen, 1950- author.

Series:

Eastman studies in music.

Eastman studies in music

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Ravel, Maurice.

Irony in music.

Music and literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (434 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

An insightful and exquisitely written reconsideration of Ravel's modernity, his teaching, and his place in twentieth-century music and culture. What is it about Boléro, Gaspard de la nuit, and Daphnis et Chloé 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 calledirony 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. Musicologist Stephen Zank has taught at University of Illinois, University of North Texas, and University of Rochester. He is the author of Maurice Ravel: A Guideto Research.

Contents:

Gentle irony

Simple sound : Ravel and crescendo

Opposed sound : Ravel and counterpoint

Displaced sound : Ravel and registration

Plundered sound : Ravel and the exotic

Sound and sense : Ravel and synaesthesia

Secrets of modernity : irony and style.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 28 Feb 2023).

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

ISBN:

1-282-89490-0

9786612894909

1-58046-725-3

OCLC:

682621286