ABSTRACT
The articles and texts collected in this book all speak of the creative power at the heart of music and of its evolution. Three essential phases in the history of music in Europe in the last four centuries are considered here. The first phase is the way in which Claudio Monteverdi managed to institute a tonal language by combining the syntactical structure of his musical language with the narrative and symbolic scope of his operas. In the second phase, we ask ourselves why the reflexive movement of musical consciousness became the engine behind music from J. S. Bach onwards. This will be the central axis of our exploration, and our reflections will continue as we listen to Bach’s famous prelude to the first cello suite. The third phase will bring us to study Ravel’s Boléro. We will ask a question that the composer asked himself: Is it truly music?… in the way that one 34understood what music was until 1928, in a European context in which Claudio Monteverdi and J. S. Bach were still founding figures.
