In Ravel's writing for the piano, the tactile dimension influences and sometimes determines aspects of musical structure. We consider physical motions—the gestures of the performer—as a dimension of musical structure in Ravel's piano-centered writing, and demonstrate how the conjunction of physical and musical features produces distinctive units, which, repeated and varied, create characteristic qualities of musical motion.

Consider the opening of Jeux d'eau (ex. 5.1), with its ascending right-hand arpeggiation <D#–G#–D#–F#> requiring the fingering <1, 2, 4, 5>—a figure that is inspired in part by the way the hand lies on the keyboard. This figure, set in motion by the rolling of the hand over the black keys, is immediately extended by retrograde (the return down the opening arpeggio), and then by a neighboring figure in halved note values (down a step in thirty-second notes, retaining the G# as the second-finger pivot). The initial four-note figure and its transformations combine to form ever-larger units, eventually creating, in this example, half-measure, then (by literal repetition) one-measure units, the third measure roughly sequencing the first up a fourth.