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Stephanie McCallum
To cite this article: Stephanie McCallum (2012) The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel,
Fauré, Chabrier , Musicology Australia, 34:2, 327-329, DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2012.738053
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Reviews 327
Roy Howat
The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009, xvi þ 400 pp.
ISBN 978 0 300 14547 2
The Art of French Piano Music is a collection of essays, some of which revisit former
published material by the author. They seek to make links to and between the four featured
French composers, and do so from an individual’s selective viewpoint and personal music-
making experience rather than as a comprehensive survey. Howat is a highly enjoyable
lecture recitalist, delighting in revealing by his easy piano facility his discoveries of common
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1 Roy Howat, Debussy in Proportion: A Musical Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
328 Musicology Australia vol. 34, no. 2, 2012
This imaginative diagram helps us to envisage the scale and overall structure of a half-hour
work of huge complexity. Two such speculative comments occur: ‘. . . just as Debussy’s
numerous echoes of Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie defy the way that last piece baffled even
Liszt’; and, later, referring to ostinati in Chabrier: ‘These were not lost on Ravel, who was
doubtless aware of the link back to Chopin’ (pp. 80–1). Previously (p. 70), musical
examples of the Chopin Polonaise-Fantaisie had been compared with Debussy’s Hommage à
Rameau. I mention these examples because all three made me feel uneasy for different
reasons and yet all three were part of an ongoing cumulative pattern of argument. The
comment about Liszt passed by without an explanatory note or evidence. The comment on
Ravel is one of many appearances throughout the text of the word ‘doubtless’, to justify
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Author Biography
Stephanie McCallum is a pianist and Associate Professor in Piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music,
University of Sydney. She is known as a soloist and chamber player, for her work on Alkan, and for championing
unusual, new and Australian repertoire. Her many solo CDs include Liszt, Schumann, Weber, Magnard, Xenakis
and also premier recordings of Alkan, Elena Kats-Chernin and even Beethoven. Her current project is recording
all five books of solo piano Chants by Alkan for Toccata Classics. See www.stephaniemccallum.com.
Email: Stephanie.mccallum@sydney.edu.au
Ó 2012 STEPHANIE MCCALLUM
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08145857.2012.738053
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