By Ramiro Sandoval, Pupukea.
There’s kind of a funny sub-genre of classical music for pieces that the composer didn’t care much about, yet exploded in popularity. Some examples include Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in c# minor, and Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance march. And I think at the top of this list would be Ravel’s Bolero, a piece that he considered “orchestral tissue without music” and yet is the most popular thing he wrote, to the point that most people wouldn’t recognize any of his other music.
And Ravel was quite critical of the work. He was originally commissioned by Ida Rubinstein to write a short ballet piece, and at the time Ravel had been focusing on deconstructing old dance forms. Working from his Basque heritage, he wrote in the form of Spanish dances, first as a Fandango but later it morphed into the Bolero. There is no development, very little modulation; it is one melody over a stable beat that repeats with different instruments and instrument groups, slowly building up and getting louder and it can be beautiful.
While one could criticize the work for “not going anywhere” and being very simplistic, minimalist, and repetitive compared to the rest of Ravel’s output, it still very good. At the forefront is the orchestration. Ravel is hailed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, orchestrates of all time, and so this work can be seen as a study in colors, or textures. There’s another aspect that is mentioned, that Bolero is among the few examples of a clearly “teleological” piece of music. That is, the end goal is clear, and the entire work is focused on reaching that accumulation, and so you get to meditate on the journey that it carries you toward that expected destination.
There’s kind of a funny sub-genre of classical music for pieces that the composer didn’t care much about, yet exploded in popularity. Some examples include Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in c# minor, and Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance march. And I think at the top of this list would be Ravel’s Bolero, a piece that he considered “orchestral tissue without music” and yet is the most popular thing he wrote, to the point that most people wouldn’t recognize any of his other music.
"Social dancers think that there are some reward-related areas
in the brain connected with motor areas." Huh?
And Ravel was quite critical of the work. He was originally commissioned by Ida Rubinstein to write a short ballet piece, and at the time Ravel had been focusing on deconstructing old dance forms. Working from his Basque heritage, he wrote in the form of Spanish dances, first as a Fandango but later it morphed into the Bolero. There is no development, very little modulation; it is one melody over a stable beat that repeats with different instruments and instrument groups, slowly building up and getting louder and it can be beautiful.
"Maui Waltz" by Loyal Garner
While one could criticize the work for “not going anywhere” and being very simplistic, minimalist, and repetitive compared to the rest of Ravel’s output, it still very good. At the forefront is the orchestration. Ravel is hailed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, orchestrates of all time, and so this work can be seen as a study in colors, or textures. There’s another aspect that is mentioned, that Bolero is among the few examples of a clearly “teleological” piece of music. That is, the end goal is clear, and the entire work is focused on reaching that accumulation, and so you get to meditate on the journey that it carries you toward that expected destination.
Blogger's Law, #33B: 50% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
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