FACT: Did you know that La Valse…is called “The Dance to Death! ” Read why.
- Ravel started to compose the piece 1919-1920, at first, as a tribute to Johann Strauss Jr., conjuring a romantic vision of “swirling clouds, couples glimpsed waltzing, as the clouds disperse little by little, one sees an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene becomes progressively brighter. The light from chandeliers bursts forth at fortissimo (letter B in the score). An Imperial Court, around 1855."
- However, during 1919, the onslaught of the First World War changed Ravel’s romantic vision of Vienna into a nightmare of speed and intensity. Beautiful Vienna and the Viennese Waltz turned ugly to Ravel, as La Valse’ s defiant comment, where changed couples move in three-quarter time to frenetic levels - exploding into a fatal shot… Ravel’s strongest comment on death in the battle of war. La Valse is now well known and named as a “calculated dance to death” graced by the composer’s successful intent.
- The piece did not become successful as the "Choreographic Poem" it was meant to be in Ravel’s time, but today it is a winning and very requested concert piece.
- At 58, Ravel was struck with aphasia and never more could compose or speak a word, but suffered until his death, locked inside his own body.
- The composition La Valse flies with sound and fury especially at the conclusion.
- Maurice Ravel's “La Valse” was originally written for orchestra.
- Whereas other composers were great thinkers, great craftsmen, great feelers or great intellects, Ravel was all of these.
- Growing up he had to be bribed six sous an hour by his parents to practice the piano.
- He is by far the most financially successful composer that France has ever produced. His music still brings in several million dollars a year in royalties.
When asked by George Gershwin to take him on as a pupil) Ravel replied, "If I do, you will become second-class. Better that you remain first-class Gershwin."
"We should always remember that sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art.” …Ravel on music.
To Ravel, music was a “divertissement de luxe,” a "delicious and perpetually novel pleasure of a useless occupation of tasks.”