A Beaux-Arts Framework for Music

Abstract

The methods for composing taught at the Paris Conservatory were similar to the three-stage, sketch-draft-refinement model of the School of Fine Arts. The chapter describes how four masters translated this model into music lessons. François Bazin shows how to sketch and elaborate the harmonization of a given melody. Édouard Deldevez takes an unfigured partimento bass by Fenaroli and makes an elaborate analysis of it to determine how it should be realized. André Gedalge demonstrates how to first sketch and then refine an episode of a fugue. Lastly, Maurice Ravel creates a stage-by-stage analysis of a difficult passage from his own Noble and Sentimental Walzes.