Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:20am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Crises of Masculinity Session Chair: Gareth Cordery, Columbia University | |
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Maurice Ravel’s La Valse and the Sublime McGill University Though numerous scholars have identified the significance of the sublime in nineteenth-century France, its twentieth-century manifestations are less frequently discussed. Despite extensive scholarship on Maurice Ravel’s La Valse (1920), no study has yet seen this piece through the lens of the sublime. Perhaps this is because the Viennese waltz is often linked to light‑heartedness and frivolity. Indeed, Carl Schorske (1981) described the Viennese waltz as “the gay symbol of Vienna.” However, critical reception of La Valse, including Schorske’s, has employed language aligned with ideas central to the theories of the sublime articulated by Edgar Allan Poe. Ravel’s dedication to perfecting his craft and his prioritization of beauty are defining qualities of a compositional aesthetic that was indebted in large part to Poe (Huebner, 2011). Poe’s literary theories of beauty included the cohabitation of the beautiful with the sublime, but he also sought to link the sublime with the grotesque, picturesque, and arabesque (Burwick, 1998). If Ravel’s particular brand of musical Symbolism can be traced through Poe’s lineage, I suggest that his understanding and adaptation of the sublime concept with the arabesque was also shaped significantly by Poe’s work. In this paper, I reconsider sublimity as an aesthetic category that engages both beauty and terror. I relate this to the arabesque and its manifestations in Ravel’s La Valse, where I align Poe’s influences with specific musical features. | |