Irony and Sound: The Music of Maurice Ravel (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781580461894)

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.

Author: Stephen Zank
ISBN-10: 1580461891
ISBN-13: 9781580461894
Publisher: University of Rochester Press
Language: English
Published: 10/30/2009
Pages: 449
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.95lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.50d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2010 pg. 229