Harmony Adrift: The Influence Of The “Water Topic” On Compositional Choices In Ravel's Jeux d'eau
Open Access
- Author:
- Dewoolfson, Emily J
- Graduate Program:
- Music Theory
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- April 02, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Eric John Mckee, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
- Keywords:
- Ravel
Jeux d'eau
Sonata form
Semiotics
Schenker - Abstract:
- Maurice Ravel’s 1901 piano work Jeux d’eau is one of his earliest dialogues with classical sonata form. A comparison of this work with the formal sections laid out in Hepokoski and Darcy’s Elements of Sonata Theory reveals clear rhetorical indicators of all major sections, although themes are treated freely and traditional key relationships are abandoned in favor of a novel harmonic language that drifts between tonality and atonality. Jeux d’eau is also notable for its water-like gestural motion, which Ravel adapted from the music of Franz Liszt and others but which he expanded through this work. Considering how seminal this piece is both to Ravel’s later works and to music from other composers who built on Ravel’s stylistic hallmarks, the absence of a detailed analytical study of Jeux d’eau is a significant gap in both the literature on Ravel’s work and the literature on the history of sonata form. In the pursuit of a more complete understanding of this work, therefore, Jeux d’eau will be analyzed from multiple revealing perspectives. In Chapter 1, I will discuss semiotic considerations, including the “water topic” and Ravel’s contributions to this topic. In Chapter 2, I will illuminate Ravel’s dialogue with sonata form by analyzing Jeux d’eau in the context of the sonata-form theory of James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy. As part of this analysis, I will use modified Schenkerian tools to clarify the harmonic trajectories of the music as it develops, both on the surface as well as at various middleground levels. Finally, I will discuss semiotic considerations, including the narrative implications of the water topic and its effect on the sonata form.