The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge Companions to Music) [Hardcover]

Deborah Mawer (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521640261 | ISBN-13: 978-0521640268 | Publication Date: September 4, 2000 | Edition: First Edition

This Companion provides a comprehensive introduction to the life, music and compositional aesthetic of French composer Maurice Ravel (1875SH1937). Leading international scholars offer a powerful reassessment of this most private and elusive musician, examining his work in detail within its cultural context. Marking the 125th anniversary of Ravel's birth, the volume explores the full range of his work--piano repertory, chamber works, orchestral music, ballets, songs and operas--and concludes by analyzing the performance and reception of his music, including previously untranslated reviews.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mawer's excellent volume brings together essays by leading international Ravel scholars...One expects only the highest quality scholarship from Cambridge, and this book certainly fulfills that promise." Choice

Book Description

This Companion provides a comprehensive introduction to the life, music and compositional aesthetic of French composer Maurice Ravel (1875SH1937). Leading international scholars offer a powerful reassessment of this most private and elusive musician, examining his work in detail within its cultural context. Celebrating the 125th anniversary of Ravel's birth, the volume explores the full range of his work--piano repertory, chamber works, orchestral music, ballets, songs and operas - and concludes by analysing the performance and reception of his music, including previously untranslated reviews.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First Edition edition (September 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521640261
• ISBN-13: 978-0521640268
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,796,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exalted Orchestration of Ravel's Characteristic Melodic Structures Revealed, April 19, 2009

By 

Ray W. Clarke - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge Companions to Music) (Hardcover)

The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge Companions to Music)[[ASIN:B0002TKFHW

and

Daphnis et Chloe [Hybrid SACD]]] Boston Symphony, Charles Munch

The Cambrridge Companion to Ravel is a book intended for the early scholar becoming familiar with the composer's works; it is also an aide for the advanced, and for the totally immersed to refresh insight and review technicalities of works that one is hearing again. It is a much needed step by step accompaniement and appendix for Ravel's highly annotated musical scores, all of which are highly detailed within so the artist is completely sure of his interpretation within the rigidly confined and narrow limnits as Ravel wrote them. These restrictions, tempos observed, would rein in overly emoting renditions, eliminating any temptations to go beyond the intellectual crispness, reserving a dryness necessary to remove the the risk of sentimentality to these compositions. While described as 'impressionist', Ravel's compositions are in direct contrast to Debussy. While both achieve great colorism, Ravel's strophic structure is as classically inspired as an Ionic Column, whereas Debussy's form is openly astrophic and doesn't follow classic models at all.

With this reveiw of The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, I've offered an accompanying and my most highly recommended recording of his penultimate composition Daphnis and Chloe. Without question the composer's most sumptuous score, encompassing the classical tale by Longus, his interpretation is in the gilded and light-filled style of Versailles, of The Hall of Mirrors, reflecting his own vision of it French Style rather than Grecian. In musical history, were he alive today, Ravel would quickly analyze its style as a tapestry of a processional in Grand Moderne Style of perhaps Jean Dupas of the period. It is vast musical frescoe or painted mural of Grecian figures imagined as Watteau or Fragonard paintings, not those of rustic pastoral Greece.

The book is enjoyable while listening to a composition and hear the book's meanings and justification. I offer here a CD from 1956, Daphnis and Chloe, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch conducting, with The New England Conservatory of Music Chorus under the baton of Robert Shaw. The author's view is that this performance remains the finest recording of this difficult score. It is a vast musical frescoe or mosaic, the most opulent picture of a classical mise en scene. It's opulence has been achieved with the greatest of detail, including distant castenets, claves and the smallest inuendos written clearly in the score.

I highly recommend this outstanding Orchestra Music Companion to any new Ravel enthusiast, or the accomplished scholar.