In no other
instance, however, not in that of Lully nor in that of Franck, has the
transfusion of blood been so successful. Ravel is in no wise treacherous
to himself. There must be something in the character of the French
nation that makes of every Jew, if not a son, yet the happiest and most
faithful of stepchildren.
And as one feels the past more strongly in Ravel, so, too, one finds him
in certain respects even more revolutionary than Debussy. For while the
power of the latter flagged in the making of strangely MacDowellesque
preludes, or in the composition of such ghosts as "Gigues" and "Jeux"
and "Karma," Ravel has continued increasingly in power, has developed
his art until he has come to be one of the leaders of the musical
evolution. If there is a single modern composition which can be compared
to "Petruchka" for its picture of mass-movement, its pungent naturalism,
it is the "Feria" of the "Rapsodie espagnol." If there is a single
modern orchestral work that can be compared to either of the two great
ballets of Strawinsky for rhythmical vitality, it is "Daphnis et Chloe,"
with its flaming dionysiac pulses, its "pipes and timbrels," its wild
ecstasy. The same delicate clockwork mechanism characterizes "L'Heure
espagnol," his opera bouffe, that characterizes "Petruchka" and "Le
Rossignol.
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