Embodied landscape: kinesthesic imagination in the reception of Maurice Ravel’s Une barque sur l’océan

Abstract

Apparently very different readings coexist in the history of the reception of Maurice
Ravel’s Une barque sur l’océan. The piece has been described either as if
considering visual scenery from afar, or as a physical conflict and an intense
emotional implication. This paper studies these apparent contradictions by first
presenting the results of the Metakinesis2 project, which consisted in arranging
listening experiences and collecting the verbal testimonies of the hearers. Relying
on a semiotic model, we found in Ravel’s music writing the elements that could
invite a subject to adopt this or that imaginary world of hearing. This allowed the
identification of correspondences between the spontaneous evocations of the
hearers and those suggested by critics of analysts throughout the reception history
of the piece.