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Boléro MAURICE RAVEL

musical processes) placing a distant third. Timbre (the acoustical sound of the Born instruments playing the music) is wide ly March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, near St- viewed as icing on the cake, as is dynamics Jean-de-Luz, Basses-Pyrénées, France (the volume at which the music is played); while both unquestionably affect how Died music comes across, composers have December 28, 1937, in Paris often considered them as less vital in defining the essence of a composition. Work composed All five of these elements are present in July 6 through October 1928, in Boléro , to be sure, but Ravel manipulates St-Jean-de-Luz; dedicated to Ida them in a way that skews their accus - Rubinstein tomed balance. The work’s extended, sin - World premiere uous melody is surely memorable, but November 22, 1928, at the Paris there is no more than a single melody in Opéra, in a ballet production by Ida the entire piece, and it is repeated over Rubinstein directed by Bronislava and over without the slightest develop - Nijinska and conducted by Walther ment or elaboration until near the very Straram. The New York Philharmonic end. The harmony, working in lockstep gave the work’s first documented con - with the melody, is similarly repetitive cert performance on November 14, and unvarying. Since the melody never 1929, Arturo Toscanini, conducting. changes, its rhythm, as well as its pitches, remains always constant; so does the Most recent New York Philharmonic essentially pitchless two-bar rhythmic fig - performance ure that accompanies the melody: tat rat- December 31, 2007, Lorin Maazel, a-tat tat rat-a-tat tat tat tat rat-a-tat tat rat-a- conductor tat rat-a-tat rat-a-tat. In the course of Boléro that rhythmic cell is heard ceaselessly, 169 Estimated duration times over, collapsing only in the rupture ca. 14 minutes of the final few measures. By dint of obses - sive repetition, the interest of the melody, harmony, and rhythm is dissipated; the lis - tener surely remains very much aware of elody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, them, but their unchanging patterns coax dynamics: these are the irre - the ear into complacency. Mducible materials of musical com - As these aspects of the composition position, and in nearly every work they play fade into familiarity, timbre and dynamics a part that follows a certain hier archical take on unaccustomed importance in how pecking order. In Western music, melody the piece unrolls. From the nearly silent and harmony (the tune and the way the beginning — the pianissimo drum tattoo, tune weaves through the gravity exerted by pizzicato string chords suggestive of a gui - its key) are generally conceded to be the tar, and the melody introduced by a flute in most important elements of composition, its low register — the composer builds in a with rhythm (the pulse underlying these tour de force of additive instru mentation,

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increasing the texture of those parts with impersonal — folk tunes of the usual every repetition and seizing upon an Spanish-Arabian kind. astonishing variety of constantly changing Ravel wrote this piece as a ballet score for instrumental combinations, including the troupe of Ida Rubinstein. The composer prominent input from rarely spotlighted initially demurred at the request, suggest- orchestral instruments such as the oboe ing instead that he merely orchestrate an d’amore. What begins by occupying only existing work by Albéniz. In the end, how- three separate lines of musical score ever, Ravel decided to write something orig- grows to occupy huge pages of staves; as inal, explaining, “After all, I would have one would expect, the volume increases orchestrated my own music much more accordingly, from gentlest pianissimo to quickly than anyone else’s.” When all is grand fortissimo. said and done, the piece he wrote turned The work’s method, however revolution- out to be principally orchestration. ary, was essentially simple. As Ravel wrote in a 1931 letter to his friend, the critic M.D. Instrumentation: two flutes (one doubling Calvocoressi: piccolo) and another piccolo, two oboes It is an experiment in a very special and (one doubling oboe d’amore) and English limited direction, and should not be horn, two clarinets plus E-flat clarinet and suspected of achieving anything differ- bass clarinet, two bassoons and contra- ent from, or anything more than, it bassoon, four horns, three trumpets and actually does achieve. [It is] a piece … piccolo trumpet, three trombones, tuba, consisting wholly of orchestral tissue soprano and tenor saxophones, timpani, without music — of one very long, very bass drum, two snare drums, cymbals, gradual crescendo. The themes are tam-tam, two harps, celesta, and strings.

At the Time

In 1928, when Ravel was composing Boléro, the following events were taking place:

In the United States, Republican Herbert Hoover is elected President.

In France, Pablo Picasso paints Painter and Model (left).

In Mexico, José de León Toral assassi– nates President Álvaro Obregón.

In England, Scottish scientist Alex- ander Fleming discovers penicillin.

34 N ew Yo r k P h i l h a r m o n i c