The Bolero of Maurice Ravel: the keys to a masterpiece

1. An air to dance

When the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein commands Ravel a ballet music, the composer chooses to revisit the rhythm of a traditional Andalusian dance called the Bolero.

He made up an orchestral work in a movement of seventeen minutes (he is due to this duration), created on November 22, 1928 in Paris. A year later, the work was played in New York without dancers. THE Bolero has become a concert piece.

2. Two repeated measurements 169 times

The Caisse Claire repeats 169 times a rhythmic cell of two measures, first solo, then joined by wind instruments, brass, strings. This repetition constitutes the spine of Bolero.

Added to this is a melody of two repeated and alternate themes, in a double crescendo (nuances and accumulation of instruments). The refrain, which serves as an introduction and conclusion to the work, is the keystone.

3. Flute Piccolo, Saxo and Company

Wood, brass, strings, percussion …

Ravel summons all the families of instruments from which he sometimes diverts the most common use. For example, rubbed strings (violins, cellos) are abundantly pinched.

It also incorporates the recent saxophone, generally little present in conventional training.

4. A popularity that will crescendo

Refrain to orchestration as meticulous as radical, the Bolero Failed its path in popular culture, earning all arts, especially cinema. Seven years after its creation, he inspired the American director Wesley Ruggles.

Reproduced or reinterpreted, it is also found in Jean Boyer (Bolero, 1942), Akira Kurosawa ( Rashōmon 1950), Claude Lelouch ( Both 1981), Patrice Leconte ( The Bolero drummer, 1992), Brian de Palma ( Femme fatale, 2002) or lately, at Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar ( Divertimento, 2023) or Emmanuel Courcol ( Branded, 2024).