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about Bolero by Maurice Ravel

mechanics relentless

about Bolero Maurice Ravel

by Patrick Crispini

In the year 1928 that Maurice Ravel Bolero undertaking the , who becomes, despite himself, his most famous work and the instrument of its international recognition. Her friend Ida Rubinstein patron, star of the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev, he places an order for a "ballet of the English character" that she wishes to represent his company. It even specifies the duration telegram absolutely fixed to the composer: seventeen minutes.

Ravi reconnect with the world of dance, it plans to begin work on orchestration six pieces from the result of Isaac Albéniz Iberia , but rights problems is curbed his enthusiasm.
After a refreshing swim in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, where he resides during the summer, he has a clear perception of a single symphonic movement, organized around a theme by insisting that he trots past few head time been repeated without any development, but with a gradation of orchestration.

"Mrs. Rubinstein asks me for a ballet. Do not you think that this theme was the insistence? I'll try to repeat many times without any development, graduating in my band my best. Sometimes it would succeed as Madelon ... "

The idea, somewhat provocatively, ignoring the old tricks are commonly taught in composition courses, is enough to seduce a Ravel always a little dissent, who remembers his years "Apache."

"No form itself, no development, no or almost no modulation, a kind theme Padilla, rhythm and orchestra "," he wrote Joaquin Nin summer 1928.

Composed between July and October 1928, the Bolero is established in Paris on November 22 of that year by the Ballets Ida Rubinstein to an audience somewhat stunned. This infernal machine , which takes up the challenge of advancing to look great with only a cell motor rhythm in two body topped by a melodic line deliberately monotonous and stereotyped, was presented by its author as an experiment " ; in a direction very special and limited " (interview by Maurice Ravel in London's Daily Telegraph , 1931).

Exasperated by the unexpected success of this work, Ravel's virtuoso will then seek to "break his toy"

"My masterpiece ? Bolero, see! Unfortunately, it is devoid of music ".

(Maurice Ravel quoted by Marcel Marnat, in Maurice Ravel, Fayard, 1986)

About a lady crying "In the crazy, the crazy" after hearing the work, composer reportedly told his brother: "That one, she understood!" ...

But what is, among other things, a tour de force, the "challenge ?

It is about taking pleasure in the automatic diversion the old recipes usual in musical composition ( "What a good turn I played the music world!" would he say one day).

Principle 1: richness of the theme. Think not to bore the audience by selecting a theme carried able to revive the musical discourse.

Ravel Solution: choose two subjects that complement the statement voluntarily and not monotonic evolution.

Principle 2 : harmonic richness. Create a route with harmonic modulations, to avoid simplistic governed by the comings and goings between the tonic and the dominant .

Ravel Solution: Tone choose the most "white" as possible, C major, and hold for almost all of the work.

Principle 3: rhythmic richness. Household various rhythms to enliven the discourse.

Solution Ravel: state a rhythmic pattern and stick to the end

Principle 4: wealth dynamics. Provide nuances and phrasing contrasting able to surprise the listener and create striking effects.

Solution Ravel: a single crescendo since the beginning until the final pianissimo fortissimo.

In orchestral opulence of post-Romantic works - even Stravinsky, in his Ballets Russes period not fail to succumb - Ravel between "poverty" minimalist. Or how to create the illusion of material wealth with purely functional ...

Problem architect, cosmetic issues, the beginnings of an era that will soon see the immediacy of the image take precedence over dialectical development of spoken message, on the abstraction of the written sign, when the projected object, visually reproduced endlessly, virtually cloned, will become the tool of the new mass culture.

This is the challenge: to deceive, with nothing more than rudimentary processes of a song street ("La Madelon"). Regardless, for the gourmet, there in the pot: what counts is the plate, the dish cooked. Art - Supreme - lies in how to accommodate the sauce, transform basic ingredients into delicious amenities, where most of the others with the same means, would only the grub. Dare say the word: making toc , but truer than the real . That

that can still entertain the Ravel that time, recognized and celebrated, but voluntary recluse in her dollhouse of Montfort l'Amaury.

Always fascinated by the mechanical perfection inherited from his engineer father, the composer responds with high precision watch the music tool.

Well lubricated, the mechanism may not only mislead, but can also function as a messenger, a body sound at full speed against the wall of time, assembled with simple tools of the artisan.

In metaphor semantics Ravel between the inevitability of the movement infallible, himself sprung from the most basic fabric, the more "innocent" who, less than twenty minutes, the listener passes the silence of the darkness blinding light of the destruction, death true fortissimo attacked with full force.

The Bolero , bullfighting sound announces a planned killing, that nothing can stop it. As always with Ravel, the "mechanism" is a priority: after "recovered", the course must be done - if we dare say - without any human intervention.

The Bolero, with its strict interpretation of conditions, allows Ravel to return the record straight by stigmatizing extravagant personalities too conspicuously priority on it.

Force interpreter, by the will of writing, has no longer an instrument .

Malice composer to reduce the condition thereof status simple running: the orchestral machine "walking alone", the role of the conductor seems to be reduced solely to choose the right tempo original.

"Ravel himself was on the podium, his gestures emphasizing short and precise automatic element of the stage action, unless appropriate steps to conduct the orchestra to express the immense power internal composition. I never saw a man live more intensely the music, under the placid surface, as Maurice Ravel's Bolero leading that night. "

(Willi Reich, cited by Hélène Jourdan-Morhange in Ravel and we , Publishing out of the world, Geneva, 1945)

As the instrumentalist Ravel often bullied as a piano performer of his own works, reducing it to mere rank of running, does he give no opportunity to settle accounts with the supremacy of sentimental and inspiration in vogue in the microcosm of music, pathos he hates above all?

Arturo Toscanini came to the Opera Garnier in May 1930 for a concert with the Philharmonic New York, is one of those who bear the brunt of cold anger of the composer. Considering the fast tempo inappropriate and final accelerando chosen by the maestro for his portrayal of the work, Ravel , although flattered to be played by the famous Italian conductor, pointedly refuses to participate in the ovation and won the general backstage with him to explain.

"You do not understand your music. It was the only way to pass the ", Toscanini said, what would Ravel replied: " You do not understand my music. It was the only way to completely miss "...

" I must say that the Bolero is rarely run as I think it should be. Mengelberg accelerates and slows excessively. Toscanini directs twice as fast as it should be and broadens the movement at the end, which is indicated anywhere. No: the Bolero must be executed at a single tempo from beginning to end, in the style monotonous and plaintive melodies of Arab and English. [...] The virtuosi are incorrigible, immersed in their dreams as if the composer did not exist. "

(interview by Maurice Ravel at the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf , March 31, 1931)

same effects and even cause a few years later. Ravel assists in Vienna in November 1931 to the creation of his Concerto for the Left Hand by armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein, to whom the work is dedicated, in the version for two pianos without orchestra.

Pianist, dissatisfied with the solutions offered to its dexterity by the composer, draws several substantial changes during execution.

"I'm an old piano and it does not sound" , says he to Ravel to justify these "arrangements" with the original text.
Ravel replied: "I am an old orchestrator and it sounds! "

The composer, offended, and hurriedly left Vienna to oppose the arrival of Wittgenstein in Paris, the latter having the exclusive Concerto for six years ...

interprets the reign of the Almighty, Ravel is opposed by the composer, creator of the musical substance. Any digression emotional effect of any virtuoso seduction can not alienate the listener to the founding idea.

Also frustrating that can be supersaturated for the ears of our time the invasive performances this masterpiece that is the Bolero , the constant presence of such a book at the pinnacle of the hearings should be understood as an expression of a sentinel who watches consciousness: the work of art, now endlessly reproduced, programmed coasting in space hyper media keeps tattooed at the bottom of the message itself a harbinger of our own death, an inevitable end .

The episodic modulation in E major (8-measures) which seems to provide an escape for a moment in ultimate progression, we do not divert the fatum , the work ends in the initial key of C major ...

Bird a magical garden or prophet of doom, the Bolero without us give the secret workings, gives us plainly the key to a parable to ponder, issued by the haughty sensibility of an artist who, himself, eventually trapped in a body that responds most: a world whose purpose would be more than mechanical or technological mastery is inexorably doomed to annihilation.

"The Bolero is not a musical like the others. It is a prophecy. It tells the story of anger, a hunger. When it ends in violence, the silence that followed was terrible for the survivors stunned "

Jean-Marie Le Clezio in Ritournelle hunger.

Patrick Crispini in The Watchmaker of dreams

© TransArt-March 2011