ABSTRACT
Recent scholarly study of compositions and critical writings by French composers working at the turn of the twentieth century reveals arabesque melody as a stylistic marker whose aesthetic qualities and expressive profile are closely aligned with contemporaneous visual portrayals of this ornament. This chapter expands existing observations on arabesque melody to consider timbre, a little studied music parameter whose allusions to ephemerality, especially with respect to the topic of the exotic feminine, demonstrates how arabesque sustained associations with themes of mystery, sensuality, and evanescence in the French cultural imagination. Commencing with a study of the musical quality latent in visual depictions of the ephemeral by Alphonse Mucha and Félix Bracquemond, this chapter goes on to examine compositions by Gabriel Pierné, Florent Schmitt, Maurice Delage, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel to show how French composers approximated sonic ephemerality through timbral (and other musical) techniques that signaled the exotic feminine through the unique timbres of the oboe, cor anglais, and flute. The interplay between pitch, rhythm, meter, motif, dynamics, and articulation will be seen to foreground timbral ephemerality and its tangible sonic contribution toward the deepening of exotic fantasy.
