Relocating Ravel’s “Sad Birds” in Alternative Forests of Space and Time
an artistic research project
Searching the forest grounds
If I say “19th Century French artistic aesthetics”, would the name Edgar Allan Poe cross your mind? Perhaps you are more likely thinking: does his name even sound French...?!
The influence of American poet Edgar Allan Poe on 19th and early 20th Century French artistic aesthetics was profound. As an example, Maurice Ravel considered Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” as the “finest treatise on composition”. Poe’s treatise presented the conception of the melancholic poem, “The Raven”, in a highly cerebral and formulaic way.
In Poe, Ravel saw a kindred spirit; a fellow logician. Upon further investigation, the connection between Poe’s treatise, “The Raven”, and Ravel’s “Oiseaux Tristes” (which literally translates as “Sad Birds”) becomes irresistible; it arguably aligns very closely with Poe’s composition guidelines and aesthetic.
What then, could an exploration of correspondences between these inner and outer worlds, languages, art forms, interpreters and time reveal?
Finding flight
What began from a spark of curiosity has since then turned into an artistic research project that is recognised as an original contribution to the discourse on Ravel’s music.
First shared on Yong Siew Toh Conservatory’s Forum Series, it was later adapted for Southeast Asia Music Academy’s 2021 online conference, further exploring the pedagogical implications and applications this framework in context of other pieces, using it as a tool to craft fresh narratives.
In June 2022, this paper was selected through a triple blind-review process to be presented at “Performing the Book? Artist-Researchers’ Negotiations Between Text and Act” Colloquium organised by Orpheus Instituut, Ghent.
The chapter will soon be issued in the Orpheus Institute Series (OIS) published in association with Leuven University Press.