{"id":4632,"date":"2016-04-12T18:38:01","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T08:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emotemuse.com\/g\/?p=4632"},"modified":"2016-04-12T18:38:01","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T08:38:01","slug":"the-background-to-bolero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/?p=4632","title":{"rendered":"The background to Bolero"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ravel’s infamous\u00a0Bol\u00e9ro<\/span> was somewhat created by chance:<\/p>\n

\n

Shortly before Ravel left for America, the Russian dancer\u00a0Ida Rubinstein had asked him for a ballet to be based on orchestrations of parts of Alb\u00e9niz’s Iberia.<\/span> To this he agreed; with so much on his plate he was not anxious to undertake further commitments for wholly original composition. \u00a0But when he returned it was discovered that the sole rights to the orchestration of Iberia<\/span> belonged to the Spanish conductor and composer Enrique Fern\u00e1dex Arb\u00f3s, who had already made a number of transcriptions, so the plan had to be abandoned and Ravel was obliged, so as not to renege on his word and disappoint a good friend, to produce an original work after all. \u00a0In fact Arb\u00f3s, when he heard of the situation, generously offered to waive his rights; but by then Ravel had decided to write a piece of his own, and the offer was declined. \u00a0It turned out to be a decision that had widespread ramifications, since the work he produced was what subsequently became his most famous (and to some tastes infamous) orchestral composition: Bol\u00e9ro.<\/span><\/p>\n

That summer, he spent a short holiday at his birthplace, Ciboure near St Jean-de-Luz, in company with his friend Gustave Samazeuilh. \u00a0One morning Samazeuilh found Ravel in a “yellow dressing gown and scarlet cap” picking out a simple little tune on the piano. \u00a0“Don’t you think this a pretty insistent kind of theme?” Ravel asked his friend. \u00a0“I am going to try to repeat it a number of times on different orchestral levels but without any development. \u00a0Mme Rubinstein has asked me for a Ballet. \u00a0On his return to “Le Belv\u00e9d\u00e8re” [his home] he set to work and completed the score in quick time. Originally it was to be called Fandango<\/span> but was soon changed to Bol\u00e9ro<\/span>, which may account for the somewhat nebulous connection with any known or strictly observed Spanish dance form. \u00a0Ravel himself was aware of this. \u00a0(He knew his Spain and his Spanish dances as well as any Spaniard and a lot better than most Frenchmen). \u00a0But he regarded it as of no importance, as he made clear when Joaquin Nin pointed it out to him. \u00a0He was also perfectly well aware of the nature of his composition: he knew it was a technical tour de force <\/span>of much skill and ingenuity, but little else. “Unhappily”, he added”, “it has no music in it.” … He was therefore a good deal taken aback at its enormous and immediate popularity as a concert piece. (1)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Bolero was premiered at the Paris Opera on 22 November 1918, conducted by Walter Straram .<\/p>\n

(1) James, Burnett (1983) Ravel: His Life and Times<\/span>. \u00a0New York: Hippocrene Books, p.121<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ravel’s infamous\u00a0Bol\u00e9ro was somewhat created by chance: Shortly before Ravel left for America, the Russian dancer\u00a0Ida Rubinstein had asked him for a ballet to be based on orchestrations of parts of Alb\u00e9niz’s Iberia. To this he agreed; with so much on his plate he was not anxious to undertake further commitments for wholly original composition. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[701],"tags":[1135,586],"class_list":["post-4632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-works","tag-bolero","tag-ravel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4633,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632\/revisions\/4633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedgebillmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}