Characteristics Of Ravel's "Exotic" Piano Works

Maurice Ravel is a French famous composer and pianist across the 19th century and 20th century, and the greatest French Impressionist musician after Debussy. His inventive musical language, the creative originality of his works the distinctive and unique musical expression, made him a composer who always combine classical and modern style in his music.Because of his unique kinship, Ravel's music show a broad range of topics and exotic styles. Many of his works embody different exotic features, and exotic subject is an important source of his music.In this essay, the author takes some Ravel's piano works as examples to show the exotic style and feature, and have four chapters in total. Chapter One is the introduction, clarify the reason of researching the topics, and the current research situation and the meaning of the research; Chapter two is in-depth study of Ravel's "exotic" music from the basic music elements:genre, modes, harmony, melody and rhythm in a concrete embodiment; Chapter three is the further analysis of the reason of these "exotic" styles; Chapter four is the evaluation of Ravel's music, in the development of 20th-century French music.