Abstract:
In the late nineteenth century, the impressionist movement in music occurred as
a reaction to the excesses of the Romantic era. Maurice Ravel is one of the
mainstream French impressionists with Claude Debussy. Even though Ravel
developed his impressionism on the basis of Debussy’s ideas, Ravel’s music style
was individual. Ravel was a craftsman and a traditionalist. While Debussy’s music
just focused on atmosphere, Ravel’s music had clear form and his ideas were never
obscured. As well as his musical individualism acquired from Debussy, Ravel made
other distinctive contributions to nineteenth- and twentieth-century French music.
He contributed neoclassical music, and special orchestral transcriptions. To
demonstrate these ideas, I will discuss Ravel’s piano music, Le Tombeau de
Couperin. Le Tombeau de Couperin reflects Ravel’s independent music style very
well, especially neoclassicism, on the basis of impressionism.
My goal in this paper is to show that Ravel developed his independent ideas
through new trials, and will also demonstrate how the distinguishing characteristics
were reflected in his music, Le Tombeau de Couperin. Ravel’s music, Le Tombeau
de Couperin, alone is sufficient to prove his greatness.
