There is considerable debate about the nature of Ravel's harmonic language throughout his entire oeuvre. Simply put, is it tonal? I will attempt to answer this question with regard to the first movement of his 1914 Piano Trio, a composition that gravitates between the extended whole-tonicity of his early works on the one hand, and the more traditional harmonic syntax of his later works, on the other.

My discussion will explore the explicit and implicit role of the whole tone within the diatonic framework of A minor/C major, and relate these findings to the sonata design of the first movement. A linear analysis reveals how Ravel manipulates harmonic and formal expectations by allowing the whole tone to permeate and to a significant extent direct the activity of each structural level: from foreground representations in the opening melody to middleground sequences, the whole tone traverses from the background melodic line to the harmonic scaffolding of the bass. This whole-tone unification at the structural level encapsulates Ravel's increasing interest in combining non-tonal elements within a decidedly tonal idiom, a harmonic technique prominently featured within the Trio.