Ravel in the Post-Tonal World: An Analysis of Select Songs from the Collection Histoires Naturelles

When Ravel composed Histoires Naturelles, the musical world was in a climate of change. As composers began to transition away from tonality, chords and chord progressions lost importance as other ways to maintain a hierarchy of pitches were explored. While the functional grammar of standard tonality never disappeared per se, these traditional tonal components (chords, key areas, etc.) adopted different roles. It was in this environment that Ravel composed music. However, even though he had every ability to abandon the rules altogether, he used the past as a foundation rather than an edict that must be maintained out of a sense of tradition. The text set in this specific composition comes from a collection of poems by Jules Renard. The prose describes various animals, and Ravel chose to set the poems “Le Paon” (the peacock), “Le Grillon” (the cricket), “Le Cygne” (the swan), “Le Martin-pêcheur” (the kingfisher), and “La Pintade” (the guinea fowl). In my analysis of the first three songs, Ravel accurately translates the text through the music using a mixture of melodic, rhythmic, and compositional techniques. Despite this, the premier brought about negative reactions from both the poet and the public. The goal of the paper proposed is to demonstrate how Ravel’s song cycle Histoires Naturelles demonstrates a transition away from tonality, and how Ravel uses compositional techniques to bring the story to life through sound. Through chord/note analysis, form analysis, and music-to-text analysis, I will explore the musical world of Histoires Naturelles and the elements that make it a transitional work of art.