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MAURICE RAVEL
Bolero (1928)

Deeply moved by works of Debussy from the 1890s, around 1900 Maurice Ravel began to find his own answers to the questions about harmony, color, and instrumental texture that the late 19th century had left unresolved. As a new century dawned, so did hopes of a “new music,” and this impulse found expression in the music of composers as diverse as Elgar and Schoenberg, Puccini and Debussy. At the beginning of the decade, Ravel’s music began to appear in print for the first time: The publisher Demets brought out elegiac pieces such as the Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) and revolutionary works such as Jeux d’eau (Water Games). Buoyed by these successes, in 1904 the composer wrote Miroirs (Mirrors), a remarkable set of “impressionistic” piano pieces that some would later compare to the paintings of Monet or Van Gogh. After this he was destined to join Debussy in writing a new chapter in the history of French music. 

Three times Ravel had entered the competition for the Prix de Rome—1901, 1902, and 1903—and three times he had failed, achieving in his last year only Third Prize. Finally he dropped out of the Paris Conservatory altogether, and instead became involved in “Les Apaches,” an informal, vaguely disreputable collection of Parisian aesthetes who met to discuss art, literature, painting, music, history, and any other topic that might arise. It was at meetings of Les Apaches that Ravel tried out some of his more daring new works, often for audiences that included such musicians as Manuel de Falla, M.D. Calvocoressi, and Florent Schmitt. Their unconventional tastes gave Ravel just the creative encouragement he needed to continue on the path that he had set for himself. 

Ironically, despite early rejections by the musical establishment of his native country, as he matured Ravel found his iconoclastic tendencies becoming tempered by a growing reverence for the past—and especially the music of French masters. Eventually, in the 1930s, he would assimilate jazz as well, and its rhythms and harmonies would imbue his music with unique “popular” inflections that would give courage to later generations of composers compelled to lace their scores with elements of mass culture.  

Composed in 1928 for Ida Rubinstein’s Parisian dance troupe, Bolero is one of the most subversive orchestral scores of the 20th century. Ravel said later that he wanted to write a piece that had “no form, properly speaking, and no modulation, or almost none—just rhythm and orchestra.” The ballet caused a stir at its premiere that November, and many decades later the music continues to draw a crowd. Each repetition of the bolero tune presents a new and intriguing combination of instruments, both in the melody and in the accompaniment. The initial strophes, for instance, explore the soloistic qualities of various wind instruments; the sixth combines muted trumpet and flute to produce a tone that sounds like neither. By the end, we are so entrenched in the key of C that the effect of the brief, shocking swerve into E major in the 18th and final strain is way out of proportion to its actual harmonic significance. 

In 1979 the piece was used in Blake Edwards’s film 10, as the accompaniment to Dudley Moore’s bumbling lovemaking to bombshell Bo Derek—and for this reason it remains indelibly fixed in the mind, for many listeners, as a sexual metaphor. While such a blatant connection might indeed have been in the back of Ravel’s mind, it should not limit us to thinking about the piece only in these terms. Bolero is, in the composer’s straightforward and no-nonsense description, “a piece lasting 17 minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral effects without music—one long and very gradual crescendo.”

—Paul J. Horsley

MAURICE RAVEL
Bolero (1928)

Deeply moved by works of Debussy from the 1890s, around 1900 Maurice Ravel began to find his own answers to the questions about harmony, color, and instrumental texture that the late 19th century had left unresolved. As a new century dawned, so did hopes of a “new music,” and this impulse found expression in the music of composers as diverse as Elgar and Schoenberg, Puccini and Debussy. At the beginning of the decade, Ravel’s music began to appear in print for the first time: The publisher Demets brought out elegiac pieces such as the Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) and revolutionary works such as Jeux d’eau (Water Games). Buoyed by these successes, in 1904 the composer wrote Miroirs (Mirrors), a remarkable set of “impressionistic” piano pieces that some would later compare to the paintings of Monet or Van Gogh. After this he was destined to join Debussy in writing a new chapter in the history of French music. 

Three times Ravel had entered the competition for the Prix de Rome—1901, 1902, and 1903—and three times he had failed, achieving in his last year only Third Prize. Finally he dropped out of the Paris Conservatory altogether, and instead became involved in “Les Apaches,” an informal, vaguely disreputable collection of Parisian aesthetes who met to discuss art, literature, painting, music, history, and any other topic that might arise. It was at meetings of Les Apaches that Ravel tried out some of his more daring new works, often for audiences that included such musicians as Manuel de Falla, M.D. Calvocoressi, and Florent Schmitt. Their unconventional tastes gave Ravel just the creative encouragement he needed to continue on the path that he had set for himself. 

Ironically, despite early rejections by the musical establishment of his native country, as he matured Ravel found his iconoclastic tendencies becoming tempered by a growing reverence for the past—and especially the music of French masters. Eventually, in the 1930s, he would assimilate jazz as well, and its rhythms and harmonies would imbue his music with unique “popular” inflections that would give courage to later generations of composers compelled to lace their scores with elements of mass culture.  

Composed in 1928 for Ida Rubinstein’s Parisian dance troupe, Bolero is one of the most subversive orchestral scores of the 20th century. Ravel said later that he wanted to write a piece that had “no form, properly speaking, and no modulation, or almost none—just rhythm and orchestra.” The ballet caused a stir at its premiere that November, and many decades later the music continues to draw a crowd. Each repetition of the bolero tune presents a new and intriguing combination of instruments, both in the melody and in the accompaniment. The initial strophes, for instance, explore the soloistic qualities of various wind instruments; the sixth combines muted trumpet and flute to produce a tone that sounds like neither. By the end, we are so entrenched in the key of C that the effect of the brief, shocking swerve into E major in the 18th and final strain is way out of proportion to its actual harmonic significance. 

In 1979 the piece was used in Blake Edwards’s film 10, as the accompaniment to Dudley Moore’s bumbling lovemaking to bombshell Bo Derek—and for this reason it remains indelibly fixed in the mind, for many listeners, as a sexual metaphor. While such a blatant connection might indeed have been in the back of Ravel’s mind, it should not limit us to thinking about the piece only in these terms. Bolero is, in the composer’s straightforward and no-nonsense description, “a piece lasting 17 minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral effects without music—one long and very gradual crescendo.”

—Paul J. Horsley