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'Crossing Borders II: Ravel’s Theory and Practice of Jazz'

Ravel Studies fosters new scholarly blood through international, interdisciplinary means, revealing symbiotic relationships between Ravel’s music and aesthetic, cultural, literary, gender, performance-based and medical studies. It received matched funding from Music & Letters and Lancaster University. Mawer and Nicholas Gebhardt present adjacent chapters on Ravel’s American connections; Mawer also completed a performance-analysis essay for the late David Epstein (MIT). Reviews include Musical Times (2011), Music Media Monthly (2011) and Notes (2012).

Mawer’s main chapter probes an intriguing double relationship between Ravel’s theory, exemplified in his writings, and his jazz-related compositions, uncovering strong correlations and transformative processes. It balances historical investigation and detailed analysis to explain Ravel’s belief in jazz as embodying the modernist era. The chapter argues that Ravel translated American jazz into a French-accented, personalized practice, as an important aspect of his post-war aesthetic identity. Mawer’s paper was initially given at Musique française: Esthétique et identité en mutation, 1892-1992, Université Catholique de l’Ouest, Angers (2008), and singled out for honourable mention in Carolyn Abbate’s keynote, RMA Conference, Dublin (2009). Concurrently, Mawer was interviewed on Ravel for BBC Radio 4 by Robert Winston (February 2009), for Radio 3 (March 2009), and was Programme Chair for the RMA international symposium: ‘Nostalgia and Innovation in Twentieth-Century French Music’ (Lancaster, 2009). The chapter led to an invited annotated bibliography (130 citations): ‘Maurice Ravel’, in Bruce Gustafson (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Music (2011), a guest published paper on Music-Dance Relations in Daphnis et Chloé, Dialogues en mouvement, McGill University (2011), and invited presentations at Maurice Ravel et son temps, Université de Montréal (2012), both funded by L’Observatoire interdisciplinaire (OICRM). Wider investigation of classical-jazz intertextuality has led to a substantial new monograph: French Music in Conversation with Jazz, viewed from both perspectives (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming autumn 2014).