I really empathize with the idea that music can be influenced by different artistic mediums. Ravel and other composers all found influence in poetry, art, film and many other artistic expressions that don’t involve music, thus influencing their musical expression that much more. I also greatly empathize with the ideas that the French, national consciousness is a conglomerate of many other cultures and social backgrounds, and that collective spirit being the force behind the shifting of musical consciousness at the time. The first World War and the mixture of cultures due to an increase of immigration result in the conversation of national consciousness being somewhat unfinished, as France wants it’s own, beautiful music to be proud of, encapsulating a culture that is still being established. That being said, composers like Debussy and Ravel find inspiration from unorthodox places to enhance their music and make it more distinct.<\/p>\n
Something that maybe be makes me feel validated in my ambivalence toward standardized composing practices, but doesn’t necessarily seem fully expressed, is the tendency for the rebellious, French, composers to not embrace said standardized musical notation. Per Ravel’s own writings, the composer rejects “perfection” in the eyes of classical notation in favor of highlighting the emotional depth to the work. I’m all for artistic freedom and the exploration of classical composition’s capabilities, but it’s a little difficult for me to equate that sensibility for freedom and the carefully composed sound of the music that I’m listening to. How could music so grand in its conceptual vision and lush in harmonic texture be a result of such a fluid, ill-defined ethos? Milhaud is named as another composer who follows this ethos of musical composition. Further research might inform me to their specific composition practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I really empathize with the idea that music can be influenced by different artistic mediums. Ravel and other composers all found influence in poetry, art, film and many other artistic expressions that don’t involve music, thus influencing their musical expression that much more. I also greatly empathize with the ideas that the French, national consciousness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1038,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/1038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}