Ravel's "Russian" Period: Octatonicism in His Early Works, 1893-1908

1999 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Baur
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Maurice Ravel ◽  
Chromatic Harmony

The octatonic scale has provided composers an important alternative to common diatonic practice since the middle of the nineteenth century. Scholars have traced a direct line of transmission with respect to octatonic writing passing from Liszt, through Rimsky-Korsakov, to Stravinsky. But octatonicism also figures prominently in the music of Maurice Ravel, and several works from the first fifteen years of his career implicate Ravel directly in the octatonic legacy, simultaneously bearing the influence of nineteenth-century chromatic harmony as practiced by Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov and anticipating methods of octatonic partitioning heretofore considered specifically Stravinskian innovations.

Bells and the Problem of Realism in Ravel’s Early Piano Music

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kieffer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Piano Music ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Maurice Ravel ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
Musical Listening

Early in his career Maurice Ravel composed two pieces that take bells as their subject: “Entre Cloches” from Sites auriculaires, composed in 1897, and “La vallée des cloches,” the final movement of the 1905 work Miroirs. Although these pieces can be contextualized within a nineteenth-century lineage of French piano pieces that depict bell peals, they also set themselves apart by virtue of their heightened attention to the particularities of bell sonorities. Relying heavily on repetitive ostinato patterns, quartal harmonies, and intense dissonances, these pieces play in the nebulous space between transcription and composition. Ravel’s experimentation with bell sonorities in his piano music can be understood in relation to a broader discourse surrounding the sound of bells in nineteenth-century France. A complex sonic object, bell resonance lent itself to different modes of listening: the harmoniousness of bell peals was a common refrain among romantic poets, Catholic clergy, and campanarian historians, but toward the end of the century it became increasingly common for physicists and popular-science publications to complain that bells were inherently discordant. In this context Ravel’s depictions of bells in “Entre cloches” and “La vallée des cloches” suggest a shift in the place of musical listening in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cultures of aurality. Ravel’s musical listening entailed heightened attentiveness to the empirical qualities of non-musical sound; his pieces negotiate in new ways the boundary between musical composition and the protean sonic world outside of music. This reorientation of musical listening participates in a broader questioning by early twentieth-century modernists of the nature of music and its sonic material.

scholarly journals Octatonicism and Chromatic Harmony

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Boulay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Chromatic Harmony ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper, the author looks at the relationship between octatonic structures and chromatic harmony. The discussion concentrates on two major aspects of late-tonal octatonicism: the use of alternative bass tones for the diminished seventh chord and the development of these sonorities into hexachordal and pentachordal combination chords. A number of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century chromatic passages are analyzed. Complex harmonies in chromatic passages are explained by formulating reductive models comprised of simpler, octatonic constructs.

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