Details of Consequence examines a trait that is taken for granted
and rarely investigated in fin-de-siecle French music: ornamental
extravagance. Considering why such composers as Claude Debussy,
Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Faure, Igor Stravinsky, and Erik Satie,
turned their attention to the seemingly innocuous and allegedly
superficial phenomenon of ornament at pivotal moments of their
careers, this book shows that the range of decorative languages and
unusual ways in which ornament is manifest in their works doesn't
only suggest a willingness to decorate or render music beautiful.
Rather, in keeping with the sorts of changes that decorative
expression was undergoing in the work of Eugene Grasset, Pierre
Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and other painters, composers also invested
their creative energies in re-imagining ornament, relying on a
variety of decorative techniques to emphasize what was new and
unprecedented in their treatment of form, meter, rhythm, melody,
and texture. Furthermore, abundant displays of ornament in their
music served to privilege associations that had been previously
condemned in Western philosophy such as femininity, sensuality,
exoticism, mystery, and fantasy. Alongside specific visual
examples, author Gurminder Kaur Bhogal offers analyses of piano
pieces, orchestral music, chamber works, and compositions written
for the Ballets Russes to highlight the disorienting effect of
musical experiments with ornament. Acknowledging the willingness of
listeners to borrow vocabulary from the visual arts when describing
decorative music, Bhogal probes the formation of art-music
metaphors, and studies the cognitive impetus behind tendencies to
posit stylistic parallels. She further illustrates that the rising
expressive status of ornament in music and art had broad social and
cultural implications as evidenced by its widespread involvement in
debates on French identity, style, aesthetics, and progress.
Drawing on a range of recent scholarship in the humanities at
large, including studies in feminist theory, nationalism, and
orientalism, Details of Consequence is an intensely
interdisciplinary look at an important facet of fin-de-siecle
French music.
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