Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music fills a unique place in Ravel studies by combining critical interpretation and analytical focus. From the premiere of his works up to the present, Ravel has been associated with masks and the related notions of artifice and imposture. This has led scholars to perceive a lack of depth in his music and, consequently, to discourage investigation of his musical language. This volume balances and interweaves these modes of inquiry. Part 1, "Orientations and Influences," illuminates the sometimes contradictory aesthetic, biographical, and literary strands comprising Ravel's artistry and our understanding of it. Part 2, "Analytical Case Studies," engages representative works from Ravel's major genres using a variety of methodologies, focusing on structural process and his complex relation to stylistic convention. Part 3, "Interdisciplinary Studies," integrates musical analysis and art criticism, semiotics, and psychoanalysis in creating novel methodologies. Contributors include prominent scholars of Ravel's and fin-de-siècle music: Elliott Antokoletz, Gurminder Bhogal, Sigrun B. Heinzelmann, Volker Helbing, Steven Huebner, Peter Kaminsky, Barbara Kelly, David Korevaar, Daphne Leong, Michael Puri, and Lauri Suurpää. Peter Kaminsky is Professor of music at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Ravel's poetics: literary currents, classical takes / Steven Huebner -- Re-presenting Ravel: artificiality and the aesthetic of imposture / Barbara L. Kelly -- Adorno's Ravel / Michael J. Puri -- Ravel's approach to formal process: comparisons and contexts / Peter Kaminsky -- Repetition as musical motion in Ravel's piano writing / Daphne Leong and David Korevaar -- Playing with models: sonata form in Ravel's String quartet and Piano trio / Sigrun B. Heinzelmann -- Spiral and self-destruction in Ravel's La valse / Volker Helbing ; translated by Nicholas Betson -- Diatonic expansion and chromatic compression in Maurice Ravel's Sonate pour violon et violoncelle / Elliott Antokoletz -- Deception, reality, and changes of perspective in two songs from Histoires naturelles / Lauri Suurpèaèa -- Not just a pretty surface: ornament and metric complexity in Ravel's piano music / Gurminder K. Bhogal -- The child on the couch; or, Toward a (psycho) analysis of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortiláeges / Peter Kaminsky.