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.