<br> Ravel the Decadent represents an enormous advance in our understanding of both the composer's music and French musical culture following the fin-de-si cle, then in the throes of one of music's many modernisms. In a series of elegant and urbane reflections, Michael J. Puri dissolves our vague notions of the music's impressionism and neoclassicism into a much more meaningful engagement with its abiding sense of historical memory, its inclination to 'dwell in the past.' He grounds this in-dwelling in its thematic procedures, which form an intricate, mnemotechnical apparatus that mediates but also destructures our experience of the music: in moments of calm reflection, these processes disrupt the seamless aesthetic surface of the music, rendering it momentarily formless. It is to these moments, in which memory becomes music, that Puri encourages us to listen. --Brian Hyer, Professor of Music Theory, University of Wisconsin - Madison<p><br> Puri's writing is elegant, clear, and engagi