Critics often treat formal restraint and emotional intensity in Maurice Ravel’s string quartet as competing aims. His sketches, however, show him tightening the work’s proportions precisely when he sought a more lyrical effect. The sketches thus _____ the supposed opposition between restraint and expressiveness: in Ravel’s process, formal control was not emotion’s rival but one means of producing it.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?