PROGRAM NOTES
SEASON OPENING CONCERT
Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, France
Died December 28, 1937 in Paris, France
BOLÉRO [ 1928 ]
Ravel spent his early career rebelling against the gatekeepers at the Paris Conservatory and working in the shadow of chief rival, Debussy, but by 1928 this son of a Swiss engineer and a Basque peasant had risen to become one of France’ s greatest musical treasures. Ravel was also just starting to complain of the neurological symptoms that would arrest his flow of music in 1932 and lead to his death five years later. It’ s possible that he was suffering from frontotemporal dementia, a degenerative condition that has been associated with surges of creative work marked by meticulous patterns.
No work of Ravel’ s was more meticulous or patterned than Boléro, composed in 1928 for Ida Rubinstein, a Russian dancer who broke off from the legendary Ballets Russes to form her
own company in Paris. His working title was Fandango, which he later changed to Boléro; both are traditional flamenco dances with rhythmic patterns based on triplets.
The musical material of Boléro could hardly be simpler. There is an unchanging rhythmic ostinato, a Spanish-inflected melody in two repeating sections, and static harmonies that only stray from C major for several measures near the end. The sustained musical interest comes entirely through variations in instrumental color, intensifying with each successive repetition.
Instrumentation Two flutes including two piccolos, two oboes including oboe d’ amore, English horn, four clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, three saxophones, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celeste, and strings.
Musical Terms Counterpoint: The relationship between two or more melodies in a musical composition. The Russian Five: Prominent 19th-century Russian composers: Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin. Overture: An orchestral introduction to an extended work, such as an opera or ballet. Ostinato: Short melodic phrase repeated throughout a composition.
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