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La valse by Maurice Ravel
1875-1937

At the outbreak of World War I, Ravel attempted to join the military for what was presumably going to be a short war. Although he made several attempts to enlist in the air force as a pilot, he was rejected on health grounds. Finally, in March 1916, he became an ambulance driver, naming his vehicle Adélaïde after the ballet adaptation of his Valses nobles et sentimentales. Before the outbreak of the war, he had begun work on a symphonic poem that he tentatively called Vienna, but in light of the spreading hostilities he refrained from working on the project and did not return to it until 1919 at the urging of Sergey Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets russes, giving it the title La valse.

Ravel is said to have described La valse as “a fantastic and fatefully inescapable whirlpool.” On the score he added the stage direction “An Imperial Court, about 1855.” The date was chosen deliberately. This was a period when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was in decline, withstanding nationalist movements in Germany, Hungary and the Balkans while trying to hold its own against the continual threat of the Ottoman Empire on its eastern frontier and France in the west. Austria, under the rule of Franz Joseph I, signed a treaty with Pope Pius IX, which terminated the liberal reforms adopted during the reign of Joseph II at the end of the eighteenth century. With it, the empire entered the most reactionary period in its history. At the time Ravel took up his pen to complete his work, the Empire had just suffered its final defeat in 1918.

In the Vienna of 1855, the Hapsburg court maintained a show of glittering joie de vivre. The city, dancing on a volcano, swayed to the waltzes and operettas of the Strauss family. Economically, this was the most brilliant and prosperous period of the monarchy. With the hindsight of 1919, however, Ravel had a clear picture of the Empire’s decadence.

La valse was premiered as an orchestral work in 1920 to great success. But Diaghilev was unhappy with it and never staged it. It was finally staged in Paris in 1928 in the style of an

elegant festive ball set in the Paris of the Second Empire during the 1860s. Finally, in 1951, George Balanchine gave it the choreographic interpretation that expressed Ravel’s original intention of the “inescapable whirlpool.”

The atmosphere of the music is thoroughly Viennese, although Ravel composed it before he ever visited the city. The opening follows closely the scenic directive Ravel added to the score: “Clouds whirl about. Occasionally they part to allow a glimpse of waltzing couples. As the clouds lift, one can see a gigantic hall, filled by a crowd of moving dancers. The stage gradually brightens and the glow of the chandeliers breaks out fortissimo.” The dance becomes wilder and wilder, a rhythmic and dynamic tour de force; the dancers lose control and are swept in a terrific whirlwind. It is a frightening, deathly riot, cut off at the end as if by a bolt of lightning.


Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
Wordpros@mindspring.com
www.wordprosmusic.com

La valse by Maurice Ravel
1875-1937

At the outbreak of World War I, Ravel attempted to join the military for what was presumably going to be a short war. Although he made several attempts to enlist in the air force as a pilot, he was rejected on health grounds. Finally, in March 1916, he became an ambulance driver, naming his vehicle Adélaïde after the ballet adaptation of his Valses nobles et sentimentales. Before the outbreak of the war, he had begun work on a symphonic poem that he tentatively called Vienna, but in light of the spreading hostilities he refrained from working on the project and did not return to it until 1919 at the urging of Sergey Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets russes, giving it the title La valse.

Ravel is said to have described La valse as “a fantastic and fatefully inescapable whirlpool.” On the score he added the stage direction “An Imperial Court, about 1855.” The date was chosen deliberately. This was a period when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was in decline, withstanding nationalist movements in Germany, Hungary and the Balkans while trying to hold its own against the continual threat of the Ottoman Empire on its eastern frontier and France in the west. Austria, under the rule of Franz Joseph I, signed a treaty with Pope Pius IX, which terminated the liberal reforms adopted during the reign of Joseph II at the end of the eighteenth century. With it, the empire entered the most reactionary period in its history. At the time Ravel took up his pen to complete his work, the Empire had just suffered its final defeat in 1918.

In the Vienna of 1855, the Hapsburg court maintained a show of glittering joie de vivre. The city, dancing on a volcano, swayed to the waltzes and operettas of the Strauss family. Economically, this was the most brilliant and prosperous period of the monarchy. With the hindsight of 1919, however, Ravel had a clear picture of the Empire’s decadence.

La valse was premiered as an orchestral work in 1920 to great success. But Diaghilev was unhappy with it and never staged it. It was finally staged in Paris in 1928 in the style of an

elegant festive ball set in the Paris of the Second Empire during the 1860s. Finally, in 1951, George Balanchine gave it the choreographic interpretation that expressed Ravel’s original intention of the “inescapable whirlpool.”

The atmosphere of the music is thoroughly Viennese, although Ravel composed it before he ever visited the city. The opening follows closely the scenic directive Ravel added to the score: “Clouds whirl about. Occasionally they part to allow a glimpse of waltzing couples. As the clouds lift, one can see a gigantic hall, filled by a crowd of moving dancers. The stage gradually brightens and the glow of the chandeliers breaks out fortissimo.” The dance becomes wilder and wilder, a rhythmic and dynamic tour de force; the dancers lose control and are swept in a terrific whirlwind. It is a frightening, deathly riot, cut off at the end as if by a bolt of lightning.


Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
Wordpros@mindspring.com
www.wordprosmusic.com