Characterizing a machine chinoise as a work solely intended to evoke exotic sounds reduces its aesthetic and power of expression to mere exoticism. The pieces analyzed here do more than signify the musical ambience of the Far East simply for the fact that their musical qualities are charming and attractive. On closer look, they are all seen to be organized, or composed, with great ingenuity and sensitivity. Undeniably, they evoke an exotic quality of sound. But to the extent that the listener or critic is reminded of the Far East when he or she listens to the work, the meaning attached to the evocation contributes to critical estimation, but does not embrace its beauty. What sets these works apart as minor masterpieces is a breadth and richness of musical ideas and the way each composer fits together and coordinates such complexity. Excellence is found in the multiplicity of sensitivities and the depth of feeling expressed within the limits of a unified composition.

Ravel is said to have claimed during an interview in 1922 that he [Debussy] “had shown a négligence de la forme; … Thus, in the larger forms he showed a lack of architectonic power. In a masterpiece like Après-midi d'un Faune, where he achieved perfection, it was impossible to say how it had been built up.” In the wake of numerous formal analyses of Debussy's Faune offered during the intervening century, few music scholars would claim that they did not know “how it had been built up.” But perhaps Ravel was talking about how and why Faune “achieved perfection” from scratch, or from musical imagination inspired by Mallarme's poem—or Ravel was saying something like Debussy's remark on the mystery of musical beauty when he warns that one can never know “how it is done.” Thus, it is “impossible to say how” Pagodes and Et la lune “had been built up.”

Beauty in la machine chinoise

Kant affirms that an object, here music, is beautiful when the pleasure with which it is heard and contemplated obtains from finding harmony among intuitions and concepts with which it is perceived without producing a determinate concept.