14. Nicolette Choral Piece by Maurice Ravel. Analysis and Interpretative Concept

In order to place the piece in the context of the impressionist current, we will try to emphasize its characteristics and tendencies on several occasions. The unit of romantic art, governed by academic laws, begins to be shaken, realism as a fundamental direction, based on a direct connection with life, gradually imposing itself, bringing a new aesthetic, with its own, particular ideas, with specific methods and means of expression. The decline of Romanticism started with the first signs of crisis manifested by the repetition of the clichés and by the insistence with which one struggles to maintain all the arts within the narrow frame of the canons, is accentuated and, especially after the Paris Commune, will lead to the outline of new directions, of national specificity, to which a large number of artists from all generations joined, considering their action as a mission and a patriotic duty of honor, of an exceptional significance in finding a path conducive to the further development of French art.