Maurice Ravel

• Born: March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, France
  
• Died: December 28, 1937 in Paris, France

La valse

• Composed: December 1919–March 1920, first as a two-piano work and then for orchestra
  
• Premiere: Ravel and Alfredo Casella premiered the piano version in Vienna on October 23, 1920. Camille Chevillard conducted the first orchestral performance with the Lamoureux Orchestra on December 12, 1920, in Paris.
  
• Duration: approx. 14 minutes

The First World War affected Ravel in a personal way. He had enlisted in the army and several times was nearly killed. His experiences in battle made an everlasting impression on him. In addition, he was devastated by the death of his mother during the war years. Thus, the music he composed right after the war is often quite dark. La valse, for example, is a bittersweet reminiscence of a world that had been destroyed by the War. In 1911, when he composed a different set of waltzes for orchestra (Valses nobles et sentimentales), Ravel could be aloof, almost classical, in his view of the dance music of another age and another culture. But the Vienna of 1920 (where, ironically, Ravel and Alfredo Casella premiered the two-piano version of La valse) had little in common with the imperial Viennese court of 1855.

The way La valse distances itself from its subject exemplifies the objectivity in Ravel’s art. It was typical for him to seek inspiration in another society or another time. He once claimed, “In art sincerity is hateful.” This statement could easily be the composer’s motto, for he always felt the need to hide his feelings behind his music. As a friend once said, “Everything in Ravel proves his wish to obliterate himself and to confide nothing. He would rather be taken for unfeeling than to betray his sentiments.” The composer himself said, “One must have a head and have guts, but never a heart.” He could not tolerate unreserved sentimental effusions or passionate gestures. He was deeply aware of the artifice of musical creation and of the necessary separation between life and art.

Yet Ravel’s music is certainly not cold or insensitive. La valse, an elegy to an opulent way of life that had been destroyed by war, is ample evidence of his capacity for feeling. But the emotions in this music are not an expression of inner passions. Ravel hid his own feelings behind an exaggerated artificiality, behind an objectified interpretation of emotion in general. He did not so much remove personal expression from his music as camouflage it behind an effortless perfection and an almost indifferent politeness.

The objectivity of La valse is evident even in its title. “The definite article,” writes critic Paul Griffiths, “is crucial. This is not just a waltz: it is a waltz about waltzing, a waltz that waltzes around itself, which may account for the frenzy to which it mounts until a momentary burst of quadruple time, coming after so much Viennese 3/4, administers the coup de grâce.”

The emotional trials of the war, plus deteriorating health, had made it impossible for Ravel to compose for several years. The stimulus to return to work came in the form of a commission from Russian ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev. He asked Ravel for a short ballet to share the program with Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. Ravel complied by writing La valse. When the composer played the piano version for Diaghilev, the impresario called it a masterpiece. “But it is not a ballet. It is only the portrait of a ballet.” Diaghilev could not see any choreographic possibilities in the music. He felt he could not work with a composition that was this far removed from its subject matter, that was so objectified, so artificial. Ravel never forgave Diaghilev. La valse was performed in concert version a few months later, and it was eventually produced as a ballet a decade later by Ida Rubinstein.

La valse contains every element of a Strauss waltz except its gaiety. Instead, there is a sinister atmosphere that becomes frenzied by the end. The composer said of the piece, “I feel that this work is a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, linked in my mind with the impression of a fantastic whirl of destiny.” An inscription at the head of the score reads:

Flashes of lightning in turbulent clouds reveal a couple waltzing. One by one the clouds vanish; a huge ballroom filled by a circling mass is revealed. The scene gradually becomes illuminated. The light of chandeliers bursts forth. An imperial court about 1855.

To his friend Maurice Emmanuel, Ravel wrote:

Some people have discovered in it an intention of parody, even of caricature, while others plainly have seen a tragic allusion—end of the Second Empire, state of Vienna after the war, etc.… Tragic, yes, it can be that like any expression—pleasure, happiness—which is pushed to extremes. You should see in it only what comes from the music: a mounting volume of sound.

—Jonathan D. Kramer