The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge Companions to Music) by Deborah Mawer

Author:Deborah Mawer [Deborah Mawer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2000-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

Mysterious building from rhythmic/melodic fragments continues (Figs. 3–4) aptly viewed by Benjamin as ‘cinematically edited glimpses of future themes’. Increased focus comes with the violas’ melancholic phrase: that close relative of Chloé’s waltz-theme in Daphnis , featuring an upper pedal underpinned by a chromatic voice-leading ascent: A–A# –B (see again Example 7.3b ; Fig. 5). Harmonic support is offered by the first bass descent to D, as the final of a flexible modality which favours the flattened seventh.

An expectant trill on G# (large-scale lydian raised fourth) leads via the dominant to an overt D major and Ravel’s letter A of the scenario (Fig. 9): ‘one makes out an immense hall filled with a whirling crowd’. Vision clarifies and with it perhaps a sense of the real beginning. The waltz is formed, its theme on violas now features the reinflected perfect fourth (x ' /x ), with regular phrasing supported by secure harmony (Example 7.7 ; Fig. 9+4 ). A process of musical intensification begins (Figs. 13–17) as ‘The stage is illuminated gradually.’ Violins assume the melody with new timbral warmth and impetus through hemiola, mutes are removed, texture enriched and dynamic increased. The intensity and rhythmic vivacity at the first climax (Fig. 17; letter B) – ‘The light of the chandeliers peaks at the fortissimo ’ – has the immediacy of the present although this is just affectionate nostalgia masquerading as memory of 1855. Nonetheless, as false, imagined memory it is doubtless more powerful; as Stravinsky mused: ‘I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.’ 43

Example 7.7 La Valse : main theme (Fig. 9, bars 4–11)

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