Classical Piece of the Day - day 36
Apologies for the repeated Ravel (he’s not featured again in the Proms so there won’t be any more of his music until September or so!) but I’m at this Prom right now (with Ravel himself 🩵)
Ravel’s Boléro has always received mixed reviews; some people view it as merely an exercise in orchestration, or, at worse, boring!
This piece reveals a few things about Ravel. Firstly, his obsession with the miniature and the mechanical; the clockwork repetition of Boléro has been linked to this, and Ravel’s father was a mechanic who passed his love on to his son. The repetitive nature of this piece has also been attributed to Ravel’s declining mental health (just as in the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand). Finally, its origins in the Spanish bolero dance lie in Ravel’s Basque heritage.
In case you can’t tell by the sheer amount of knowledge I have on this, Boléro is one of my favourite pieces of all time. I am stressfully anticipating it at the end of the next half. Wish my teary self good luck 🥲
Edit: I definitely didn’t cry so hard that my nose ran…
But in all seriousness, Boléro is SO clever. Many critics have focused on the musico-sexual (one of my favourite words, despite its meaning) elements, but my personal favourite part is when the first of the two melodies is orchestrated so that the piccolos play the first harmonic above the fundamental pitch. The level of knowledge of music theory and orchestration needed to pull that off is just incredible (sorry I’ll shut up about Ravel now it’s just been a long day and I’m feeling all the emotions).
