The name is absent

140         Lecture on Music

I believe that I myself have always followed a direction
opposite to that of Debussy’s symbolism.

Let us now turn to another aspect of my own work which
may be of more immediate interest to you. To my mind,
the “blues” is one of your greatest musical assets, truly
American despite earlier contributory influences from
Africa and Spain. Musicians have asked me how I came
to write “blues” as the second movement of my recently
completed sonata for violin and piano. Here again the
same process, to which I have already alluded, is in evi-
dence, for, while I adopted this popular form of your
music, I venture to say that nevertheless it is French music,
Ravel’s music, that I have written. Indeed, these popular
forms are but the materials of construction, and the work
of art appears only on mature conception where no detail
has been left to chance. Moreover, minute stylization in the
manipulation of these materials is altogether essential.
To understand more fully what I mean by the process to
which I refer, it would be sufficient to have these same
“blues” treated by some of your own musicians and by
musicians of European countries other than France, when
you would certainly find the resulting compositions to be
widely divergent, most of them bearing the national char-
acteristics of their respective composers, despite the unique
nationality of their initial material, the American “blues”.
Think of the striking and essential differences to be noted
in the “jazz” and “rags” of Milhaud, Stravinsky, Casella,
Hindemith, and so on. The individualities of these com-
posers are stronger than the materials appropriated. They
mould popular forms to meet the requirements of their own
individual art. Again—nothing left to chance; again—
minute stylization of the materials employed, while the
styles become as numerous as the composers themselves.

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