< INTRO
Performing by the Book? Musical Negotiations between Text and Act
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore
The aesthetic of Edgar Allan Poe, your great American, has been of singular importance to me. (Ravel [1928] 1990, 45)
As for technique, my teacher was certainly Edgar Allan Poe. The finest treatise on composition, in my opinion, and the one which in any case had the greatest influence on me was his Philosophy of Composition. . . . I am convinced that Poe indeed wrote his poem The Raven in the way that he indicated. (Ravel 1990, 394)
The acute and subtle perception guiding the artist . . . may become keener and keener year after year, leaving no place for standardized and permanent classification. (Ravel [1928] 1990, 42)
In reflecting upon the structures and influences that underpin individual musical works, we rarely have such specific access to the composer’s direct preferences as we find in Maurice Ravel’s remarks about Edgar Allan Poe. The influence of Poe on Ravel’s aesthetics has been widely acknowledged across Ravel scholarship. Some studies have directly applied Poe’s treatise “Philosophy of Composition” to the formal analysis of individual Ravel compositions, such as Boléro (Shaw 2008; Lanford 2011). To my knowledge, however, the piano piece “Oiseaux tristes” has not yet been explored in relation to Poe’s treatise. To do so seems eminently sensible, not least because of its uncanny mirroring, in subject and disposition, of “The Raven,” the poem forming the subject of Poe’s treatise. Perhaps most pertinently, Ravel himself considered “Oiseaux tristes” to be the most characteristic piece in his Miroirs, a set of piano compositions written in 1904–5 (Ravel 1906) that “mark a rather considerable change in [Ravel’s] harmonic evolution” (Roland-Manuel 1990, 30). While I do not posit that Ravel based “Oiseaux tristes” on Poe’s treatise, the abundant connections between the composer and writer invite exploration.
Over time, my initial spark of curiosity about Poe and Ravel fuelled a larger artistic inquiry. As much as this chapter is about Poe and Ravel, it is also about the connective powers between texts and contexts that have spurred artistic correspondences, resonances, and ownership across people from different places and times. How did the sensibilities of a nineteenth-century “American (not) in Paris” shape those of a French composer? How might they inspire a Singaporean artist-researcher further removed by two centuries and one continent? I begin with the intertextual correspondence between four textual sources—Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” and “The Raven,” on the one hand, and Ravel’s “Oiseaux tristes” and the translation of his 1928 Houston Lecture “Contemporary Music,” on the other. I will first analyse the nature and strength of the connections Ravel found in Poe, situating these in the context of early twentieth-century French artistic aesthetics. This will be followed by applying Poe’s analysis of his own poem, in “Philosophy of Composition,” as a proposed roadmap for understanding “Oiseaux tristes.” The cross-mapping of Poe’s treatise onto Ravel’s “Oiseaux tristes” will be demonstrated in two ways: first, by reflecting how the derived roadmap affects my musical interpretation of the piece; and, second, through unpacking my multimedia performance of “Oiseaux tristes” and its layers of embodied translation. The final section of the chapter shifts slightly in focus—away from Poe and Ravel, to come full circle by reflecting on the artistic-cultural correspondence that the process has generated.
For any piece, it is challenging to create a musical “roadmap”—an interpretive appraisal illuminating structural touchpoints and features—that meaningfully acknowledges evocative qualities within a theory-oriented framework. Creating such a roadmap for “Oiseaux tristes” feels just as elusive. Following the premiere of Miroirs, the critic Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi singled out “Oiseaux tristes” as “something extremely new” with “a great depth of feeling, of intimate feeling, totally devoid of grandiloquence” (quoted in Orenstein [1975] 1991, 49−50). This reaction suggests that the extent of perceived emotional transparency and intimacy ran contrary to expectations, serving as a counterpoint to images of artificiality and imposture. 1 Regarding formal analysis, the consensus is that the work possesses an improvisatory quality. In contrast with works from Ravel’s student days at the Paris Conservatoire (1889–1900), a newfound freedom in structure is unmistakable. While such observations regarding emotional quality and form clarify the desired musical impression, bridging the relations between musical sections and emotional narrative—relations that formal structures (such as sonata form) both essentialise and afford—is left entirely to the interpreter. Such freedom presents an interesting challenge to the performer-interpreter, who finds it necessary to reconcile two paradoxes: first, to create a musical roadmap that illuminates and stimulates an emotional narrative yet does not impose rigidity; and, second, to connect Ravel’s innate craftsmanship with his seeming abandonment of form. 2
In the hope of creating a musical roadmap—and keeping in mind the above-mentioned paradoxes—I began ploughing through the “forest” of texts and contexts that emerged in direct and indirect response to Ravel’s and Poe’s works. The dense network of interpersonal and intertextual relations amassed over time means that there are countless ways to navigate this “forest” and that any route will involve moments of disorientation and reconsideration. The path that I have found (or that, perhaps, has found me) suggests that—when guided by personal artistic instincts (or, in the quotation above by Ravel, “the acute and subtle perception guiding the artist”), self-reflexivity, and a desire towards new vantage points—one can emerge from the “forest” with an increased sense of artistic ownership.
A classical pianist is arguably limited in the extent to which reinvention and innovation can be applied when approaching an annotated composition. To what extent can ownership, originality, and creativity truly be exercised when, traditionally, the basis of one’s profession lies in the ability to reproduce what has already been notated? The influence of benchmark recordings (including Ravel’s own piano roll, recorded for Duo-Art on 30 June 1922) and the traditions inherent in institutionalised music training also leave present-day classical musicians grappling with the “rep dilemma”—that is, being caught between the constraints of repertoire, repetition, reproduction, and reputation (Lanskey 2019). In addition, having being born into a history coloured by politics of colonialism and imperialism, it is particularly difficult for me to understand how my artistic and cultural identities could sensibly coalesce. Over the past two centuries, globalised networks of expansion and dissemination have resulted in displacements of native traditions and in impositions of received, “foreign” traditions. Beneath these calcified layers of history, tradition, and the resultant cultural baggage, how can I find a way to make the artistic process alive? Over what process can I, in retrospect, claim to have exercised artistic ownership? These are questions to which I have found an inkling of answers by navigating the “forest”; they will be slowly unpacked in the remainder of the essay.
Ravel’s 1928 lecture “Contemporary Music” focuses primarily on contextualising the composer’s work in relation to more general influences that are relevant to the composer’s view of contemporary French musical composition. In recognising Poe’s impact on his own aesthetic, albeit tangentially, the lecture distinguishes two types of influence: “one might be called the national consciousness, its territory being rather extensive; while the other, the individual consciousness, seems to be the product of an egocentric process” (Ravel [1928] 1990, 41). Ravel stresses that it is only through awareness of these that one’s artistic identity, lineage, and community can be identified and deeply understood. Given these two points of focus—national and individual—it is intriguing to inquire how an American two generations before Ravel might have come to play such a central role in the composer’s aesthetic.
At first glance, an American poet may seem to be a strange influence on the constitution of France’s (and by extension Ravel’s) consciousness; but Poe’s indirect influence proves to have been profound and enduring. By Ravel’s adolescence, Poe had already acquired notoriety in French literary circles. 3 Many of his works had been translated by ardent admirers such as Charles Baudelaire, whose French translation of Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” in La genèse d’un poème was read by Ravel (New York Times [1928] 1990, 455). 4 But it is more immediately clear that, from an early age, Ravel’s innermost artistic philosophy—his “individual consciousness” ([1928] 1990, 41)—already bears evidence of Poe’s influence. One of the earliest acknowledgements of the composer’s respect for Poe’s work dates from 1892, when the seventeen-year-old Ravel showed Ricardo Viñes—a future fellow member of the Apaches and dedicatee of “Oiseaux tristes”—two “dark and somber drawings” he had sketched after reading Poe’s short stories “A Descent into the Maelström” and “MS. Found in a Bottle” (Orenstein 1990, 22). By Ravel’s days as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, Poe’s influence was perfectly evident (Kelly 2007).
What, then, could Ravel mean by mentioning the importance of Poe’s “aesthetic” in relation to his own compositions? Rather than the abstraction of stylistic character, as evidenced in his early drawings, the later Ravel points directly to Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition,” in which he clearly saw pedagogical value, calling it “the finest treatise” (Ravel 1990, 394). While Ravel enjoyed “The Raven” as a self-sufficient work, the explanation and analysis in the “treatise” elevated Ravel’s enjoyment and regard of both the poem and the poet. However, unlike Poe, Ravel rejected analyses of and commentaries upon his own works ([1928] 1990, 40). Given his own disinterest in musical analysis, yet also given his enthusiasm for Poe’s self-explication, what insights could be gained if we were to apply the compositional techniques espoused in Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” to the experience of Ravel’s music, particularly in a context that shares with “The Raven” a similar effect, length, and even subject? On the other hand, given Ravel’s resistance to analysis, to what extent can such an approach be justified?
In a two-part essay in La revue musicale, Alexis Roland-Manuel in 1921 referred to Ravel as a “sensual logician” (Huebner 2011, 10). 5 Since then, the popular ideas that Ravel was emotionally reticent and that his music was scene painting (rather than romantic outpouring) seem to have become mutually supportive. Parallel with his meticulous personal grooming is the beauty of his music, rendered with the most exquisite craftsmanship. 6 Similarly, his love of mathematics and logic seems to align with his love of methodical and mechanical constructions, as evidenced, for example, by his self-acknowledged fascination for the cars his father handed down to him in his youth.
A similar propensity towards meticulous precision underpins Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition,” in which the author’s design is “to render it manifest that no one point in [the] composition [of “The Raven”] is referrible either to accident or intuition—that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem” (Poe 1846, 163). His process is essentialised in eight points or “considerations” that guided “The Raven” from conception to completion. These eight considerations constitute the tenets of my analysis when I cross-map Poe’s compositional technique to Ravel’s music.
Another striking similarity between Poe and Ravel is the way in which they set themselves apart from “the crowd.” Ravel expresses disdain towards contemporaries such as Massenet for writing “everything that came into his head” (1990, 395); Poe, too, draws a distinction between himself and other writers who “compose by a species of fine frenzy” (1846, 163). The similarities in the thoughts and their clarity articulated by both artists is uncanny. Although others may not view composition through the lenses of formulaic deduction and calculable precision, logic is requisite to best represent emotions in Ravel’s and Poe’s creative processes. Indeed, Ravel’s apparent reluctance to engage in retrospective analysis is perhaps even more intriguing given his assertions about the constructed nature of his compositional process.
Alongside Ravel’s reluctance to analyse his work a posteriori is the challenge of translations between languages (English–French–English), art forms (literary analysis–poetry–music), cultures (French–American–Singaporean 7), times (mid-nineteenth century–early twentieth century), or interpreters (poet–composer–performer). Essentially, differences in medium and context make it likely that some specifics may not be completely transferable. Stylistically, for example, how do different literary and musical forms correspond to each other? Ravel once said, “For me, there are not several arts, but only one: music, painting, and literature differ only in their means of expression” (1990, 393). Contemplating Édouard Manet’s Olympia and Emmanuel Chabrier’s “Mélancolie” from the Dix pièces pittoresques (1881), Ravel perceives the same “essence” in both works, with the “same impression” being simply “transferred to another medium” (ibid., 394). Thus, the disciplinary porousness and fluidity inherent in Ravel’s outlook offers some validation for exploring correspondences between “The Raven” and “Oiseaux tristes,” drawing on visual imagery, metaphor, and ultimately direct representation.
A further challenge relates to what Ravel referred to in his 1928 lecture as the relationship between “inner manifestations” and “outward expression” ([1928] 1990, 47). In his view, when two artworks have a similar outward expression yet a dissimilar inner manifestation, one almost necessarily is plagiarising the other, in that surface expression is replicated without any deep-level commonality in aesthetics and vision. By the same token, we can infer that, if two artworks share the same impulse and root in their inner manifestation, any dissimilarity in the outward expression would be due to other variables, personal factors that do not impugn the validity or integrity of either artist. In fact, it would only make them kindred artistic souls, creating through differing means of expression. Such a kindred spirit is what Ravel most likely saw in Poe, affirmed in the latter’s treatise, and this connection is the foundation upon which further interpretations are built.
Having outlined the connections between Poe and Ravel’s aesthetics and contexts, this section will unpack the framework developed by Poe in “Philosophy of Composition” using his eight “considerations”: extent, locale, effect, tone, pivot, climax, rhythm and metre, and denouement. In tandem, I will explain how these “considerations” informed my performative interpretation of “Oiseaux tristes.”
Extent considers the length of a work against its “unity of impression” (Poe 1846, 163) wherein “brevity must be in direct ratio [to] the intensity of the intended effect” (164). The theme of unity is echoed and reinforced in the consideration of locale, in which Poe deems it pertinent for a work to unfold within the “close circumscription of space,” akin to “the force of a frame to a picture” (166, italics removed). Having decided that 108 lines is the appropriate length to sustain and deliver his intended poetic effect, Poe then demarcates the temporal and physical boundaries in which the narrative unfolds: one night, within the narrator’s chamber. A parallel, concise form characterises “Oiseaux tristes.” From Ravel’s inscription—“birds lost in the torpor of a very dark forest during the hottest hours of summer” (Roberts 2012, 56)—it is clear that he intends the thirty-two bars of “Oiseaux tristes” to evoke and characterise these birds within the imagined physical framing of a torpid forest. A similar understanding of length and frame also informs other movements of Miroirs: each miniature revolves around the depiction of a singular subject within a specified setting—of moths in the night, a boat on the ocean, a jester’s song in the morning, and bells in the valley. The implications of “extent” and “locale” as structural frames—both temporal and imagined physical—lend a framework and intentionality to my conception of the musical narrative.
For Poe, there are three types of effect (i.e., impression) at one’s disposal: beauty, which is the “excitement or pleasurable elevation, of the soul”; passion, being the “excitement of the heart”; and truth, which is the “satisfaction of the intellect” (1846, 164). It is in contemplating the beautiful that the most intense and pure pleasure can be found, making it the most desirable effect (ibid.). Moreover, Poe proposes that “beauty” reaches its highest manifestation when expressed through the tone of sadness. At the time of composition, Ravel cited the following lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1.2.54–55; [1623] 2005, 630) 8 as a source of inspiration, “the eye sees not itself / But by reflection, by some other things,” thus capturing, as Orenstein ([1975] 1991, 159) puts it, “an objective, though personal, reflection of reality.” 9 Combining this definition of effect with the considerations of extent and locale, the broad strokes of construction come into view. Within the frame of a torpid forest, the effect to be sustained is that of a carefully constructed poetic sadness, with distance borrowed from a reserved perspective—that is, through notions of scene-painting rather than impassioned outpouring. The portrayal of sadness gains a deeper sense of beauty when personified by a subject (the bird) and its surroundings. When performing, I consider myself to be both conjuring and observing sadness, which translates into a sense of restraint and third-person remoteness that is nevertheless empathetic with the emotional content at hand.
A pivot refers to the means through which the structure of a work gels and attains cohesiveness; Poe thought the refrain to be the most effective example of a pivot. In “The Raven,” the refrain is the word “Nevermore,” which is sounded by the bird at the end of each stanza in the fashion of an ominous omen. To avoid the monotony of repetition, Poe stressed that the context in which the refrain appears should be varied each time. The thrust of the narrative follows how the refrains and interspersing materials build towards a climax, which, in Poe’s words, pairs the refrain with the context that would invoke the greatest amount of despair, reaching the peak of melancholy. The climax should also appear near the end, right before the final appearance of the refrain.
The central motif of the “Oiseaux tristes” refrain is a pair of repeated notes; the full refrain is a theme that consists of three iterations of the repeated notes motif (figure 9.1). The full refrain appears three times: first, a cappella (bars 1–3); second, over an A♭ pedal point with murky non-triadic inner chords (bars 7–10); third, in a modulation in which the refrain begins on A instead of B♭, over a G–D compound pedal point with, again, non-triadic inner chords (bars 21–24). 10 The varying harmonic context that accompanies each refrain steeps the birdcall in different hues of sadness.
Figure 9.1. Maurice Ravel, “Oiseaux tristes,” Miroirs no. 2, bars 1–3 (Ravel 1906).
I identify bars 25–28 as the climax (figure 9.2). This decision may seem misguided compared with most works, in which the climax is signalled by a dynamic peak, but an alternative perspective corresponds more closely to Poe’s definition. The dynamic peak of “Oiseaux tristes”—the only time f is indicated—is in bar 15. Identifying that as the climax, however, is problematic: the piece is only midway through at that point, which leaves little room to argue that the music before serves as a convincing build-up and also brings ambiguous implications to the material that follows. Though mostly pp, bars 25–28, on the other hand, prove to be a more compelling climax when their narrative function is re-examined through Poe’s definition. Here, the refrain evolves into a sprawling and soaring arabesque figure that is seen nowhere else in the piece and which, in bar 26, descends into the familiar texture of unresolved chords in the lower registers. The narrative shifts towards despair as the short-lived possibility of hope and liberation, embodied in the arabesque, is juxtaposed with the immediate and cruel denial of it. Bars 25–28 also constitute the last section that contrasts with the full refrains in terms of rhythm and metre. The full refrains are characterised by a lumbering triplet pattern, whereas bars 13–17 employ divisions of the triplets into groups of three and two (bar 13) before further acceleration into divisions of four (bar 15). A similar manipulation of rhythm is seen in bar 25. It is precisely the choreography of alternating the still refrains with such rhythmically animated sections—mirroring the alternation between sadness in entrapment and pursuit of escape—that justifies placing the climax in bars 25–28, which suggest that escape is merely a fantasy and sadness an inevitability.
Figure 9.2. Ravel, “Oiseaux tristes,” bars 25–28 (Ravel 1906).
Poe proposes that the denouement follows the climax, stating that this is where all materials reappear and synthesise, bringing completion and a sense that the story transcends “the real.” The synthesis of previously heard materials—such as pedal point, the D–B♭ figure from bar 4, and the core of the refrain—is found in bar 29. That bar is repeated three times, inspiring a poetic reading in which the sad birds are forevermore entrapped in the eternal suspense of the torrid forest.
Overall, the musical roadmap derived from the cross-mapping demonstrates that: (1) the cross-disciplinary application of a literary framework onto a musical work can enrich interpretive experience; (2) such an approach challenges one’s normative musical understanding of key structural points, such as a climax, by involving a different set of considerations and contexts; (3) the analysis of a musical work can go beyond traditional, section-based forms to a narrative understanding based on the linear unfolding of musical events. A non-linear, puzzle-piecing method gained from Poe’s treatise reveals broader points of narrative and structural considerations.
My process of correspondence and translation—beginning with a close reading of the score of “Oiseaux tristes,” followed by a literature review and intertextual studies of scholarly texts related to Ravel and Poe, and ultimately leading to a hermeneutic, cross-disciplinary application of principles from Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” to “Oiseaux tristes”—ultimately found manifestation in a multimedia performance of Ravel’s piece (figure 9.3). Alongside poetry, prose, musical notation, and scholarly discourse, such a multimedia performance represents yet another layer of correspondence and translation. Recognising that sound alone could convey narrative and interpretive insights only to a limited extent, I turned to a visual medium that could more explicitly represent structural and narrative features: digital animation. In collaboration with Clarisse Bu, a Singaporean graphic-motion designer, I came up with the idea of transferring my Poe-inspired interpretation of “Oiseaux tristes” to a visual medium.
The animation is deliberately conceived in black and white to emphasise the duality of (and tension between) entrapment and liberation that underpins the emotional or poetic experience of sadness (MF9.1). The artistic deliberations concerning how the “sad birds” themselves should be visually represented were particularly interesting. After first considering a realistic aesthetic, which would have involved footage captured of birds around Singapore, we opted for something more abstract and symbolic, with feathers and ink taking the place of birds and trees. The full refrain, for example, is represented by a slowly turning feather. Each return and variation of the full refrain conveys a deeper sense of sorrow: the feather initially appears solitary against a white background (00:10), “reappears” against black ink that symbolises a dense and suffocating canopy (00:49), and finally is multiplied through fractured mirroring, orbiting in complete darkness (02:18). In the sections that alternate with the refrain, a sense of hope, liberation, and liveliness is represented through feathers with quicker motions (01:26–01:58) and active textures. At 02:50–03:38, the climax begins, as the multiple feathers generated in the third full refrain gather together and collectively start to rise. By 02:57, it becomes apparent that these feathers are soaring towards the treetops. The sense of hope is augmented by using footage of a treetop in Singapore’s Clementi Forest as a backdrop (the only time real-life footage appears in this video). Pairing the refrain material with a visual context that suggests heightened reality and hope thus invokes the greatest despair when, in the next moment, the feathers sink and fall back to the pit of the forest, exemplifying birds that will never escape. With a fresh narrative, I believe the creative agency exercised in this process of translation and co-creation further augments the performative and interpretative dimensions of “Oiseaux tristes,” offering a personal and reimagined performance.
MF9.1. Video recording of the author performing “Oiseaux tristes” (2022) to the animated video by Clarisse Bu and herself.
Figure 9.3. The author performing “Oiseaux tristes” (2022) to the animated video by Clarisse Bu and herself.
The self-evident is often the least examined: how did I come to study Western classical music?
—Kok (2011, 75, reflecting critically on the early experience of her music education in postcolonial Malaysia)
In 1922, Ravel’s name first appeared in Singapore newspapers. Under the headline “A Real Classical Concert,” the programme of an upcoming performance by Russian soprano Anna El-Tour was announced to include his works (Malaya Tribune 1922). 11 A hundred years later, the musical landscape of Singapore has drastically evolved. In this country, which prides itself on its cosmopolitanism, modernity, and multiculturalism, the presence of Western art music and its institutions is keenly felt. Growing up as a first-generation Singaporean born to Chinese parents, I did not hear one note of Ravel or a word of Poe—or for that matter, the English language—in my household before I was taught at school how to understand and express myself in those “tongues.” For most of my upbringing, learning and eventually specialising in the repertoire of Western classical music seemed a rather natural consequence of my early fascination with the piano. However, as my musical pursuits deepened, I increasingly experienced a sense of cultural “admixture” that was haphazard at certain times and deeply acute at others; my dialogues with and reproduction of music written by “dead white men” ran counter to other cultural expressions that could be more readily identified as “mine” or “ours”—by way of national or ethnic cultures—instead of “theirs.” The proliferation of Western classical institutions in Asia is a phenomenon that bears the mark of colonialism. My cognisance of such cultural admixture has since been enhanced and articulated through the discourse of postcolonial studies at large, and more pertinently through the critical reflections, reckonings, and negotiations for agency echoed across non-European practitioners of Western art music (Kok 2011; Tan 2017; Yang 2007). Perhaps some comfort can be drawn from the sense that this struggle is, to some extent, shared by European music scholars, as discussions among European conservatories bear out. Decolonisation has presented itself as a daunting but necessary challenge to be met in this shared historical moment, so fiercely determined by processes of globalisation and imperialism. In the midst of these discourses, the exploration of ownership and autonomy in relation to interpretative and performative dimensions of music-making has proven to be essential in the recognition of one’s personal and artistic identities (Hargreaves and Marshall 2003; Lanskey 2019; Wang 2015). The weight of tradition stands against the freedom of self-innovation in a delicate balance—how does one find a way forward while preserving the layers and lenses that have contributed to the self? Returning to the “forest” analogy, how can one pay heed to the dense texts and contexts without being trapped under their branches? Perhaps the most emboldening realisation from this research is that it is possible to dive deeply and yet emerge free from the “forest.” Having journeyed through various layers of cultures and translation, I was already finding a way to “emerge” from them to explore “Oiseaux tristes” with greater ownership over the artistic process. With my research now consolidated, I have condensed the key points of the project into a model (figure 9.4).
Figure 9.4. Diagram illustrating a personal concept of the hermeneutic process of artistic-cultural correspondence derived from this project.
By production, I refer to the process through which an inspiration or thought materialises in a distinct and identifiable artistic product, such as Poe’s treatise and Ravel’s composition. Through the means of distribution enabled by cultural processes, agents, and technologies of the modern world—industrialisation, printed media, publishers, globalisation, touring performers—the distribution and circulation of ideas, personnel, and commodities has increasingly transcended national and continental borders, finding markets and audiences on a global scale. Upon receiving the produced artwork, one may at times stop at the stage of consumption, when the moment of experience does not trigger further thoughts or resonance. However, when one feels porous and susceptible to the artwork, a process I would term infusion happens. This is marked by the feeling of internalising a hitherto foreign idea that is embodied in a work, a feeling sparked by an ideological resonance that intrigues and results in a deepened desire towards understanding. This is evident both in Ravel’s fascination with Poe and in my decision to explore my interpretive instincts in correspondence with theirs. When a step is taken beyond consumption and infusion towards an active process that signifies and reconciles translational challenges and barriers, the consequent artistic product, or by-product, is translocated and recontextualised. In its new form, as comprehended by the beholder—Ravel’s renewed understanding of formal structure in light of Poe’s compositional principles as articulated through his lectures and interviews, or my revitalised understanding of “Oiseaux tristes” as expressed above—the recontextualised product is liberated from categorisations, labels, or cultural baggage that might have previously been perceived by the individual to impede such translocation. The multi-level transformation through new connections discovered, discourses explored, and dissonances negotiated revitalises one’s sense of interpretive ownership and autonomy, which in turn reverberates through one’s artistic identity and practice. When a newly conceived idea materialises in an original composition, in the case of Ravel, or in an original multimedia performance, as in my “Oiseaux tristes,” the (re)production can potentially begin another virtuous cycle of cultural correspondence when received by another kindred artistic spirit.
This project represents an early foray into a multi-layered artistic inquiry. The perspectives gained from the initial intertextual analysis have deepened my appreciation of each work or “text” in relation to others. From that, too, have risen enriched possibilities of musical interpretation in light of self-aware performance practices. Echoing Ravel’s concept of an individual and national consciousness for identifying one’s artistic lineage and identity, the multi-layered correspondence between texts and contexts addressed in this project has emboldened a keener personal reflection of both kinds of consciousness within my own artistry. The journey through the dense “forest” of texts and contexts emerging from the works of, and correspondences made between, Poe and Ravel has presented challenges of translation, translocation, and artistic ownership. Because of the ever-increasing fluidity and exchange between artistic practices and cultural bodies made possible by heightened global connections, a twenty-first-century performer-interpreter must inevitably face such challenges, correspondence, and negotiations. The multimedia production of “Oiseaux tristes” was an avenue to express the complexities of personal and cultural correspondence with which I have been grappling. It also attests that all individuals, when exercising the creative agency they uniquely possess, can contribute to the ever-flourishing process of recontextualisation and translocation. Further, this project shows that artistic philosophies and ideals can persist through time and remain relevant as guiding principles, finding fresh reverberations and manifestations in the hands of others. The virtuous cycle of artistic-cultural correspondence therefore proves its potential to offer self-permitting transformation in transcending any perceived constraints of texts and contexts.
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Orenstein, Arbie. (1975) 1991. Ravel: Man and Musician. New York: Dover. First published 1975 (New York: Columbia University Press).
———. 1990. Introduction to Orenstein (1990) 2003, 1–25.
———, ed. (1990) 2003. A Ravel Reader: Correspondence, Articles, Interviews. Mineola, NY: Dover. First published 1990 (New York: Columbia University Press).
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Cite as
Lin, Xiangning. “Relocating Ravel’s ‘Sad Birds’ in Alternative Forests of Place and Time.” In Performing by the Book? Musical Negotiations between Text and Act, virtual companion, edited by Bruno Forment. SONUS Series. Ghent: Orpheus Instituut, 2024. https://doi.org/10.47041/SONUS.2024.1.
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