Rodrigo and Ravel’s Boléro Program Notes

Maurice Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso

World Premiere May 17, 1919; Paris, France
8 Minutes

Maurice Ravel is usually called an impressionist, but he was really a classicist.
He often adopted Baroque and classical forms in his compositions.
Many of his works were originally for piano. He later made orchestral versions.
During World War I, he drove a truck transporting petrol and munitions to front lines.
Ravel was one of the first to recognize the power and potential of recorded music.

Alborada del gracioso, which has been translated both as “Morning Song of the Jester” and “The Fool’s Aubade,” refers to a facetious stock character in Spanish comedy. Its opening measures feature full strings playing pizzicato, making a giant guitar out of the orchestra. The central section is a plaintive love lament with the bassoon as soloist. Cameo solos for woodwind and brass principal players dish up luscious melodies rich with the flavor of paella and tapas as castanets evoke the mystery of flamenco. Alborada del gracioso is a magnificent showpiece for orchestra.

Manuel de Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat Suite No. 1

World Premiere July 22, 1919; London, England
12 Minutes

Manuel de Falla is regarded as the greatest 20th-century Spanish composer.
He spent seven years in Paris, where he met Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Paul Dukas.
Falla was fascinated with spiritual and mystical subjects, which surfaced in his opera La vida breve and his ballet El amor brujo.
Andalusian flamenco music was a significant influence on his compositions.
His incorporation of Spanish folk elements made him an exponent of musical nationalism.

Spain’s Manuel de Falla composed more than 20 operas, but he is better known for his ballets El amor brujo (Love the Magician) and El Sombrero de tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat). The latter work is a farce about flirtation, temptation, attempted seduction and mistaken identity. The scenario revolves around a miller and his beautiful young wife. They love each other, but neither one can resist flirtation. The ballet takes its name from the local magistrate (Corregidor), whose three-cornered hat is a symbol of his authority. Its first suite comprises four movements that draw on folk dances of the Murcia, Aragon, Navarre and Falla’s native Andalusia cities. We hear a brief introduction depicting the Spanish afternoon, followed by Dance of the Miller’s Wife (Fandango), a brief character sketch of the pompous Corregidor and finally The Grapes, a sectional medley during which the miller’s wife dangles a cluster of grapes in front of her would-be suitor.

Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (Aranjuez Concerto)

World Premiere November 9, 1940; Barcelona, Spain
21 Minutes

Joaquín Rodrigo was blinded at age three by a bout with diphtheria.
He later developed into a virtuoso pianist.
In 1933, he married a Turkish pianist, Victoria Kamhi.
Concertos became his preferred form, especially works for guitar and orchestra.
In Spain, he is still viewed as a national hero.

Aranjuez, a beautiful town about 30 miles south of Madrid, is best known for its opulent royal palace. The Palacio Real is an early 18th-century jewel of architectural classicism whose apartments are among the most splendid in Europe. Magnificent formal gardens and parks surround the edifice, enhancing its allure through most of the year. Although the compound originated as a summer retreat, Spanish monarchs took to moving their court to Aranjuez during the spring when the gardens were at their loveliest. Joaquín Rodrigo immortalized the place in music with his 1939 Concierto de Aranjuez, which remains the most frequently performed guitar concerto in the literature. All three movements of Rodrigo’s Concierto breathe the fragrant air of those gardens with abundant dance rhythms and wonderful melodies adding to their charm. The slow movement is a lament for Spain during the Civil War, while the outer movements are a nostalgic remembrance of Spain’s glory days. Since its premiere in 1940, Concierto de Aranjuez has been an audience favorite – and the grandfather of all guitar concerti.

Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole

World Premiere March 15, 1908; Paris, France
16 Minutes

His Rapsodie espagnole – his first orchestral work – opens with music that evokes the languid heat of the Spanish night. An insistent, four-note descending motive plays as an ostinato against the lush sound of the strings. Ravel follows this atmospheric opening with a Malagueña, a variety of fandango indigenous to the region of Málaga in southern Spain. Next is the Habanera, which lacks the now-familiar, four-note ostinato of the opening movement but is imbued with the characteristic sway of the dance whose name it bears. To conclude the Rapsodie, Ravel offers a burst of brilliant orchestral color in Feria.

Maurice Ravel’s Boléro

World Premiere November 22, 1928; Paris, France
13 Minutes

Even before Blake Edwards’ film “10” (1979) assured it a permanent place in every pop record collection, Boléro was one of the most frequently performed compositions in any concert hall, readily recognized by non-musicians. Something about its insistent, understated (and deceptively simple) rhythm and magnificent, controlled crescendo to the ultimate orchestral conclusion has captured audience imaginations for nearly a century. With Boléro, Ravel secured an enviable spot in the permanent repertoire. For most audience members, the music of Ravel’s Boléro is so familiar as to not require comment. What may enhance the experience is concentrating on the intricacy of the melody, whose rhythmic nuances and sinuous wanderings are vastly more complex than one initially thinks.

Alborada del gracioso

Maurice Ravel

Born March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrenées, France · Died December 28, 1937, in Paris, France

Listeners would grasp the unmistakable Spanish character of Ravel’s glorious music even without knowing its background. Like many of Ravel’s orchestral works, the piece that opens this program originated for solo piano. He composed the piano suite Miroirs (Mirrors) in 1904 and 1905. Miroirs launched an intensely creative period for him that lasted through 1908. Ravel acknowledged the suite’s importance in his brief biographical sketch, describing it as:

… a collection of piano pieces that mark a change in my harmonic development that is so profound that they have put many musicians out of countenance who up to that point have been the most familiar with my style.

Each of Miroirs’ five movements was dedicated to a different member of Les Apaches – the name translates roughly to “the hooligans” – a group of artists and writers with whom Ravel was closely associated with from about 1901 until the First World War. The dedicatee of Alborada del gracioso was Dmitri-Michel Calvocoressi, a musicologist.

Pianistically, it is the most virtuosic movement in Miroirs. Calvocoressi called it “a big, independent scherzo in the manner of Frédéric Chopin and Mily Balakirev.” The great pianist Walter Gieseking considered it and Scarbo, from Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, to be two of the most difficult piano works in the literature.

Ravel’s orchestral version capitalizes on the flashy elements, particularly in his use of percussion. The movement’s structure is essentially A-B-A. Rapid repeated notes enhance the rhythmic impetus and unmistakable Spanish flavor. Trombone glissandi add to the atmosphere. If the original piano writing was symphonically conceived, Ravel’s gifts as orchestrator blossom fully in this larger version. The first performance of the orchestral version took place on May 17, 1919.

Instrumentation: The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, crotales, triangle, tambourine, castanets, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, xylophone, two harps and strings.

The Three-Cornered Hat Suite No. 1

Manuel de Falla

Born November 23, 1876, in Cádiz, Spain · Died November 14, 1946, in Alta Gracia, Argentina

Along with his older countrymen Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla helped to restore Spanish music to a level it had not enjoyed since Renaissance times. Enormously gifted, he was drawn to music early. He decided on composition after developing a passion for the works of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, vowing to achieve a comparable legacy for Spanish music.

In 1907, at the age of 31, he went to Paris, where he benefitted by his association with a number of French composers, particularly Dukas, Debussy and Ravel. Falla’s was an original voice, however, and he learned from them without imitating. To the contrary, both Debussy and Ravel were drawn to the sensuous harmonies and compelling rhythms of Falla’s native Spain, revealing more of Spain in their French music than Falla did of France in his own.

Falla composed some 20 operas, only one of which, La vida breve, has achieved any kind of secondary niche in the standard repertoire. He is best known for his symphonic impressions for piano and orchestra, Nights in the Gardens of Spain, and the two ballet scores El amor brujo (Love the Magician) and El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), from which this program’s selections are drawn.

In its original 1917 version, The Three-Cornered Hat was a comic pantomime about flirtation, temptation, attempted seduction and mistaken identity. The Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev convinced Falla to develop Pedro Antonio de Alarcon’s folk tale into a ballet. In its new form, it premiered in London in 1919, with sets by Pablo Picasso. Falla added the Introduction so that the English audience would have sufficient time to appreciate the drop-curtain that Picasso had designed for the second production.

The work is suffused with musical humor, relying heavily on folk dances of Murcia, Aragon, Navarre and Falla’s native Andalusia. Falla’s vibrant score breathes the perfumes of Spain, with arresting melodies and foot-tapping (sometime foot-stomping) rhythms.

The scenario revolves around a miller and his beautiful young wife. They love each other, but neither one can resist flirtation. The ballet takes its name from the local magistrate (Corregidor), whose three-cornered hat is a symbol of his authority. Falla employs the bassoon to illustrate his stuffy, self-important personality. The miller’s wife catches his eye as he passes by in a procession. Slipping back to attract her attention, he watches as she dances, ignoring him. Dance of the Miller’s Wife is a fandango, a dance in rapid triple time customarily danced by a couple with accompaniment of guitar and castanets. When she eventually acknowledges his presence, she dances a very Spanish minuet, tempting him with a cluster of grapes that she keeps just out of reach. Falla’s compelling and melodically rich score frequently evokes the sonorities of Spanish guitar.

At this point, the plot becomes very complicated with the Corregidor winding up in the Miller’s house, and the Miller stealing away disguised in the magistrate’s uniform – to serenade the Corregidor’s wife! In the end, the Miller and his wife are reunited and reconciled, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Instrumentation: Falla’s score calls for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), three oboes (second and third doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, a large percussion battery (castanets, triangle, bass drum, snare drum, xylophone, crash cymbals and suspended cymbal), harp, piano, celesta and strings.

Concierto de Aranjuez (Aranjuez Concerto)

Joaquín Rodrigo

Born November 22, 1901, in Sagunto, Valencia, Spain · Died July 6, 1999, in Madrid

Much has been written about the powerful influence of Spanish music and culture on French musicians; indeed, at these performances, we hear superb examples of that influence in the three Ravel compositions on this program. Of equal importance, if more subtly manifested, is the reverse process: French music and particularly French pedagogy and the stimulating atmosphere of Parisian salons, exercising its own power over Spanish musicians. Joaquín Rodrigo was one of several major Spanish composers whose music bears a pronounced Gallic flair. He went to Paris in 1927 to study composition with Paul Dukas (composer of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice). Rodrigo spent five years under Dukas’ tutelage, gaining the respect of his teacher and his French contemporaries as both pianist and composer. He also met and was befriended by his older countryman Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), who had earlier studied in Paris and was enjoying great success there. French schooling left an unmistakable imprint of refinement and elegance on Rodrigo’s imaginative, individual and decidedly Spanish style.

About the composer

Rodrigo was blind. He lost his sight when he was three, a victim of the diphtheria epidemic. His hearing was unimpaired, however, and a strong predilection for music led him to seek formal lessons in piano, violin and theory as a child. He matriculated at the Conservatory in Valencia when he was 16 and had won his first national competition in composition by the time he was 23. He worked on a special Braille music typewriter with manuscripts being copied into conventional notation afterward.

Concierto de Aranjuez is not only Rodrigo’s best-known composition, it is also the most celebrated guitar concerto and a 20th-century classic. Rodrigo composed it in 1939 in Paris, where he and his wife had been forced to remain during the turbulent years of the Spanish Civil War. They returned to Spain in late 1939 with the manuscript. At the work’s premiere in 1940, Rodrigo was immediately acknowledged to be the leader among Spain’s younger generation of composers.

Iconic 20th-century work

Part of the work’s genius lies in the delicacy with which it is scored. Rodrigo was not daunted by the relative quietude of the guitar as a solo instrument. Rather, he celebrated its delicacy, providing the guitarist with extensive unaccompanied passages and segments with very light accompaniment. This has the effect of making the guitar sound very loud indeed during the forte sections, rather than being overpowered by the breadth of the orchestra. Further, when the full orchestra enters during the passages when the soloist is silent, the drama is palpable. Both idiomatic and virtuosic, Concierto de Aranjuez is a masterpiece.

Rodrigo’s own words about Concierto are as relevant today as they were when he wrote them 85 years ago:

Throughout the veins of Spanish music, a profound, rhythmic beat seems to be diffused by a strange phantasmagoric, colossal and multiform instrument … that might be said to possess the wings of the harp, the heart of the grand piano and the soul of the guitar … The Aranjuez Concerto is meant to sound like the hidden breeze that stirs the treetops in the parks, and it should be only as strong as a butterfly.

Instrumentation: The score calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, solo guitar and strings.

Rapsodie espagnole

Maurice Ravel

One of music’s most bemusing riddles is the idea that the French write better Spanish music than the Spanish. To be sure, Spain has its native sons: in addition to Manuel de Falla and Joaquín Rodrigo, who are represented on this program, Isaaz Albéniz and Enrique Granados come to mind. However, the seductive pull of Iberian culture has captivated a remarkable number of French musical geniuses as well. Think of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, Debussy’s Ibéria and La Soirée dans Grenade from Estampes, Emmanuel Chabrier’s España or any number of Gabriel Fauré’s piano works. Ravel is perhaps the best example of all, having composed a number of works inspired by Spanish culture: the opera L’heure espagnole (1907-1909), Alborada del gracioso (1918), the lovely Vocalise-Etude (1907), Boléro (1928) and of course Rapsodie espagnole (1907-1908).

Though he spent most of his life in Paris, Ravel’s roots were in the Basque country of southwestern France, where he was born. His mother, to whom he was very attached, spent a considerable portion of her youth in Spain, and Ravel acknowledged her impact. Manuel de Falla met Ravel during the summer of 1907 and was startled by what he called the “subtly genuine Spanishness of Ravel,” particularly as manifested in the Rapsodie. De Falla later wrote:

Ravel’s was a Spain he had felt in an idealized way through his mother … This explains not only the attraction exerted on Ravel, since his childhood, by a country he so frequently dreamt of, but also that later, when he wanted to characterize Spain musically, he showed a predilection for the habanera, the song most in vogue when his mother lived in Madrid.

The Spanish composer’s trenchant observations zero in on the seminal third segment of the Rapsodie, which is a reworking of a Habanera for piano that Ravel composed in 1895. Its smooth integration into the larger orchestral work – incredibly, Ravel’s first major orchestral score – is one of the Rapsodie‘s most impressive features.

Rapsodie opens with a sultry Prélude à la nuit. It is dominated by an insistent, four-note descending motive that plays as an ostinato against the lush sound of the strings. Ravel follows this atmospheric opening with a Malagueña, a variety of fandango indigenous to the region of Málaga in southern Spain; this one wavers flirtatiously between A major and A-minor and spotlights the English horn.

Next is the Habanera, which lacks the now-familiar, four-note ostinato of the opening movement but is imbued with the characteristic sway of the dance whose name it bears. To conclude the set, Ravel pulls his Rapsodie out of the shadows and onto center stage with a burst of brilliant orchestral color in Feria. After the muted strings of the preceding three sections, this ending is doubly effective. Though the composer grew to feel that the orchestra was too large for the piece, there is no denying its visceral excitement.

Instrumentation: Ravel scored the Rapsodie for two piccolos, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, Sarrusophone, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, Basque tambourine, castanets, side drum, tam-tam, xylophone, celesta, two harps and strings.

Boléro

Maurice Ravel

The Polish-born composer Alexandre Tansman once told musicologist Roger Nichols:

Boléro was first performed as a ballet by Ida Rubinstein, commissioned by her, and it was not a musical success. And then Toscanini came with the New York Philharmonic and played it much faster. And Ravel was not pleased at all. We were in the same box, and he wouldn’t stand up when Toscanini tried to get him to take a bow. Then he went backstage and told Toscanini, “It’s too fast,” and Toscanini said, “It’s the only way to save the work.”

Neither Ravel nor Toscanini could possibly have foreseen the enormous popularity that Boléro would achieve.

“17 minutes of orchestra without any music”

Ironically, he had very mixed feelings about the work, dismissing it as a “crescendo on a commonplace melody in the genre of Padilla; Boléro: 17 minutes of orchestra without any music.” He told Michel Calvocoressi that it was an experiment:

Orchestral tissue without music … There are no contrasts, and there is practically no invention save the plan and the manner of execution. The themes are altogether impersonal, folk tunes of the usual Spanish-Arabian kind, and the orchestral writing is simple and straightforward throughout, without the slightest attempt at virtuosity.

Was it embarrassment in the face of such enormous success that caused him to be so self-disparaging?

Ballet with Spanish roots

Ravel began work on Boléro upon returning from a four-month tour in the United States and Canada early in 1928. Prior to his departure, he had agreed to compose a ballet for his friend Ida Rubinstein, a former dancer with Diaghilev’s ballets russes who had formed her own troupe. Her initial suggestion was an orchestration of pieces from Albéniz’s Ibéria. After discarding that idea, Ravel next thought of arranging one of his own pieces. Eventually, he began work on an entirely new composition, called Fandango. Shortly afterward, he altered the title to Boléro, completing the score in a matter of months. The ballet was premiered in November 1928.

For most audience members, the music of Ravel’s Boléro is so familiar as to not require comment. What may enhance the experience is concentration on the intricacy of the melody, whose rhythmic nuances and sinuous wanderings are vastly more complex than one initially thinks (try singing the melody on your own, without a recording in the background to help you along).

Also, Ravel’s incomparable orchestration technique reaches a pinnacle in this work. His masterly tour through the orchestra gives virtually every melodic instrument its chance to shed some new light on the theme. The tessitura is rather high for bassoon and trombone, giving those instruments an opportunity to explore an unusual register. Ravel was also bold in including the older oboe d’amore and the relatively new tenor and soprano saxophones as solo instruments.

He escalates both dynamic level and tension while sustaining a steady pulse and a virtually static harmonic rhythm. The success of his “exercise” has given Western music one of its most treasured orchestral works.

Fandango and Boléro

Both Fandango and Boléro are Spanish dances in triple time. Fandangos, which are first mentioned in Spanish literature at the beginning of the 18th century, are traditionally danced by a couple with accompaniment of castanets and guitar, often with singing as well. The balletic appeal of such a tradition is obvious. By contrast, the Boléro is a more recent development, not appearing until the last quarter of the 18th century. Rarely moving at more than a moderate tempo (whereas the Fandango can range from moderate to fast), Boléros allowed for more intricate choreography incorporating some highly stylized traditional poses.

Instrumentation: Boléro‘s colorful orchestra comprises two flutes, piccolo, two oboes (second doubling oboe d’amore), English horn, clarinet in E-flat, two clarinets in B-flat, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, high D trumpet, three trumpets in C, three trombones, tuba; sopranino, soprano and tenor saxophones; timpani, two snare drums, cymbals, tam-tam, celesta, harp and strings.