Maurice Ravel: "Boléro"

The orchestral work Boléro, by the French composer Maurice Ravel, is one of the few classical pieces having reached its very high level of popularity having not been conceived for the delight of a large audience on the occasion of a certain event. "Every moment Ravel's Boléro is being performed somewhere around the world", has stated the composer Lawrence Petitgirard. At the same time, the work is the masterpiece of the composer, in every sense of the word.

By the time Ravel wrote it, 1928, he was just over 50 years old and was at the height of his fame and worldwide recognition, with hundreds of pieces to his credit, which were heard throughout Europe and North America.

Just after returning from a tour of the Scandinavian countries, of England, of the United States and Canada, and while on holiday in Saint Jean de Luz (a town on the Atlantic coast), Ravel received a telegram from Ida Rubinstein. In it, the Russian dancer and businesswoman suggested the idea of a ballet for the Paris Opera, which ideally would not last more than 17 minutes.

Apparently, this somewhat rudimentary request (because of the time duration imposed) led him to conceive the simple idea of an "insistent" theme that was to be repeated twenty times without any development, just maintaining a constant reorchestration of the theme, a rather mad effort that could only be undertook by the undisputed master of the art of instrumentation that Maurice Ravel was.

Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937)

This idea of repetition and insistence transmuted into a sonorous and dynamic progression, always similar in its essence and at the same time different in its expression, that until now remains as the most persuasive "lesson of orchestration" that a musician has ever written.

Reduced to pure sound, Boléro seems like an orchestral plot without music, only a long and progressive crescendo but conceived with an unprecedented audacity: a simple motif divided into two parts, supported by an omnipresent and tirelessly repeated rhythm, with no changes, except for that one which Ravel did alternatively entrust to the snare drum (and then to the other instruments) following a simple instruction: where there were eighth notes now you make triplets, then return to the eighth notes and so on until the end of the piece.

Accelerating is not allowed. Never. The only change permitted is the sound intensity, from an almost inaudible pianissimo to the fortissimo final dissonant chord. The sound volume has to be grown in such a way that the audience does not realize that there has been a steady crescendo, all the while.

Boléro was first performed at the Paris Opéra on November 22, 1928, with a dance choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska.

Gustavo Dudamel conducts The Wiener Philharmoniker.

A brief listening guide:
After the opening rhythm on the snare drum (that continues unabated throughout the work), the piece proceeds as follows:
0:33 solo flute (in the instrument’s low range)
1:28 solo clarinet (also low in the range)
2:23 solo bassoon (high in its range)
3:18 solo E-flat clarinet (smaller and higher in pitch than the standard B-flat clarinet)
4:14 solo oboe d’amore
5:08 muted trumpet and flute (the flute floating like overtones parallel to the trumpet’s line)
6:03 solo tenor saxophone (an unusual inclusion in an orchestra, but Ravel liked jazz)
6:58 solo soprano saxophone (a small, straight, high-pitched saxophone)
8:15 French horn and celesta (the bell-like tones of the latter parallel to the horn’s line)
8:47 quartet composed of clarinet and three double-reeds (a combination organlike in timbre)
9:40 solo trombone (replete with sensuously sliding passages)
10:33 high woodwinds (growing more strident in tone)
11:24 The strings finally emerge from their background role to take the lead for the remaining variations. The crescendo continues to build; the drumbeat persists, becoming ever more prominent. Before long, trumpet accents are added, contributing to the intensity until, in the final moments, the full orchestra is tossed into the mix —trombones, cymbals, and all— bringing the piece to an exultant, if abrupt, conclusion.

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