Sonata form in Ravel's pre-war chamber music.
Item
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Title
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Sonata form in Ravel's pre-war chamber music.
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Identifier
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AAI3296948
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identifier
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3296948
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Creator
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Heinzelmann, Sigrun B.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William N. Rothstein
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music
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Abstract
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Ravel was deeply concerned with the beauty and logic of musical form. To achieve formal clarity and perfection, he meticulously worked out every detail of a musical composition. This is especially true for sonata form, which is central to Ravel's instrumental work.;Although Ravel's works form an important part of the repertory of Western classical music, rigorous analytical studies are still scarce. This dissertation provides an in-depth study of the first movement of Ravel's String Quartet and the outer movements of his Piano Trio. It also presents analytical tools developed to analyze Ravel's complex and intricate music: an adaptation of Schenkerian analysis that takes into account dissonant prolongations at the fore- and middleground, and a set of step-based operations to describe motivic transformations within and across different referential collections. Both methodologies are applicable to a wider range of musical styles.;In addition to these tools, the analyses apply the concepts of Hepokoski and Darcy's Sonata Theory to demonstrate how Ravel invokes classical models only to distance himself ingeniously from them.;While harmonic analysis shows how Ravel's predilection for coupling third-related keys leads to a double-tonic complex in the Piano Trio's first movement, Schenkerian voice-leading graphs reveal that Ravel's sonata forms follow tonal background structures even where they do not adhere to Schenker's sonata-form paradigms. The Schenkerian approach also brings into relief the structural roles played by non-diatonic collections, which provide contrasting sonorities to delineate formal sections, and---as linear progressions---shape climax preparations at the surface level and transitional sections at the middleground.;Detailed motivic analysis brings to light how motives and their transformations help the listener track changes between referential collections. Since Ravel associates specific motive shapes with formal functions, motivic transformations also delineate the sections and subsections of a sonata's successive zones. Further, motivic analysis demonstrates how Ravel generates the thematic substance of an entire movement or sonata-cycle from motivic cells that appear in the first measure.;Taken together, these analyses provide concrete evidence that, striving for Mozartian perfection, Ravel created works of extraordinary craftsmanship and beauty.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
