Hearsay-I

Lately, whenever I hear the most recent lauded composition by some up-and-coming composer that turns out to be yet another variation on the minimalist notion of "music" (repeat a basic motif again and again, ad infinitum), I recall that a major composer like Ravel thought his Bolero essentially an exercise in orchestration and crescendo...when you remove the orchestral fabric there still was left behind a melodic phrase long enough and interesting enough to qualify as compositional, not fragmentary in the way so much of modern music is being written these days.

I think that's what I find lacking so much in contemporary art, whether music, art, ballet or writing: a reliance on minimalism instead of cogent, coherent thought to convey an experience.  It's the reason why in spite of so much technical prowess displayed by younger and younger performers, I still prefer the work of artisans whose work has been tempered/enhanced by experience as well as the spark of that indescribable, elusive element that makes a work of art or performance more than the sum of its individual parts.

Whenever I get frustrated at life, I look to interests like music for a respite, and Ravel has definitely proven to be that for me throughout my life...it is ironic that someone considered as austere and "clinical" as Boulez could have been my principal avenue into this music.  It reminds me of the reason why I loved french in college even though my professor told me my Russian classes "ruined" my pronunciation (but she said it so sweetly and so echt-francais that I found it endlessly charming to this day)...the notion of french music performance has everything to do with understanding the cultural, artistic and stylistic approaches...a reviewer of a recent biography of the composer said it best:

...His capacity for the most beautiful invention distinguishes his work in all these genres: one needs to hear only the first few bars of the Piano Trio, or of the Pavane, or of the Chanson Hébraique, to be drawn in immediately to an intense, beautiful world. 

Ravel’s music evokes an atmosphere that is of the era of Proust, but not Proust’s social context, of somewhat depraved aristocrats and useless young women waiting for someone to marry them. It is a world of the refined bourgeoisie, the people who sought to hold things together during the Third Republic, especially after the war, and to develop further a distinctive French musical culture. Debussy was dead before the Armistice: Saint-Saëns and Widor very old; Les Six still in short trousers, or learning their craft. Ravel was the pre-eminent French composer of that era, and he made a statement not just for French music, but for the whole of French culture, and for France itself. 

Evocation instead of context: I could not have described it better.

One of the most revered pieces of music to me is the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams, and it is no coincidence to me that its unique voice was crafted in that curious alliance between Ravel and RVW where the latter sought the former out for instruction even after he had already begun actively composing.  To me Ravel's compositional style was only one part of his genius...another was his ability to "hear" in orchestration how to best present ideas with as little distraction as possible.