La Grenouille dans le Fauteuil

My thoughts, explorations and opinions about Music, Philosophy, Science, Family life; whatever happens. Shorter items than on my web site. The name of the blog? My two favorite French words. I just love those modulating vowels.

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Monday, August 21, 2006

Bolero - Not so Dumb

Ravel’s Bolero is, - what? A famous piece. An infamous piece. A notorious piece. All of these and, deceptively, much more. Ravel himself famously said that it contained “no music”, which was a tad on the self-deprecating side. But you can see what he meant - it is tedious, popular, redundant, exciting, infuriating, but it contains no counterpoint, no contrast of mood, no modulation. It is one of those pieces that lives right on the cusp between music and non-music:- like the opposite extreme from Schoenberg’s early atonal works.

But whereas Schoenberg almost fell off the precipice in his groping for ultimate seriousness, Ravel almost became catatonic in his flirtation with banality and empty-headedness.

Bolero is a member of a little clutch of pieces that fed my enthusiasm for classical music as a small child. I had a collection of 12 inch 78 rpm discs of my favorite pieces, culled from my father’s library. Bolero took up two full discs - four sides of music that had to be manually placed on the turntable, flipped, and changed when the time came. Four full sides it took up, but for the life of me I could never really figure out why. As rendered, acoustically, through my lovingly filed fiber needles, all four sides sounded pretty much identical to me, except that Side One seemed a bit tentative, and Side Four was the only one with a proper ending. I suppose stopping for a disc turn hampered the flow quite a bit, but so it did for all pieces. Poor old Beethoven’s Eroica occupied a fairly hefty suitcase, and was effectively dismembered into a chain of sound-bites.

Even so, from the beginning I was aware that there was something about Bolero that was distinctly odd. Hypnotically, inhumanly so.

The piece consists, as everyone knows, of the same tune played over and over again until it eventually stops. That is all that happens. So why is it so famous, notorious, well-known, adored? And since it is so successful, and its construction so simple, why isn’t it merely one amongst a whole crowd of imitations, of me-too pieces, mining the same paralyzing seam? Why does it stand out so? Exasperating as it is, wherein lies it’s undeniable brilliance?

Usually, in music as in other things, it is the smaller details that are most easily grasped, and the big picture that is elusive. For instance, we all know the tune of the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th, and can hum along with it easily. But can you describe, succinctly and accurately, the shape and structure of that finale? (And a chronological account of the type found in most program notes: “This happens, then that happens, then, surprisingly, we are suddenly plunged into the other, before all is resolved by that” - this sort of thing won’t do, as it is merely a list, not a grasping of the whole entity.) With most pieces of normal music, it is easy to latch onto the tune, but hard to grasp the overall structure and plot, which probably exploits surprise and deception anyway.

Now in Ravel’s Bolero, exactly the opposite is true. It is unbelievably easy to grasp everything that is to be grasped about the structure and drama on a single hearing. A tune is played over and over again, each time by different instruments, getting louder as it goes along, until it gets very loud, and then stops. That’s it.

But can you actually hum the tune? The tune that you have heard so many times, can you actually recall it accurately? I’ll bet that you can’t. Try putting a recording on and humming along with it and I am sure you will go wrong within seconds. Again it is the reverse of the Beethoven. This melody is completely unmemorable. Instantly recognizable, but impossible to remember correctly. The way Ravel achieves this is simple - it stems from the lack of any relationship between the melody and the accompaniment. The accompaniment is ruthlessly in 3/4 time, with the drum going

“Tum-ticketty-Tum-ticketty-tum-tum
"Tum-ticketty-Tum-ticketty-ticketty-ticketty”

over and over without exception. The harmony is static too. But the tune isn’t in 3/4, except by accident sometimes. It isn’t in anything really, as regards being in 2 or 3 or 4, it is just meandering and chaotic. It isn’t in any particular key either. It just wanders around the scale, pretty much without direction, until it eventually makes it to the home note. So even as the work drones on and on and on, it never gets to be as infuriatingly predictable as, say, “twinkle twinkle little star” 30 times over, since at the end of each stage, you still feel you haven’t quite “got it” yet.

There are other irregularities that slip past the censor, too. It isn’t really one tune going around, but two half-tunes, not played alternately, as would make sense, but the first half gets played twice, each time as if it were a complete tune, then the second half is played twice. So although it sounds elusive but repetitious, it takes four verses of the “tune” before the cycle actually comes round again. This also means that whichever part of the tune you are hearing now, part A or part B, there is always a 50/50 chance about which bit you will hear next. Doubt at every turn.

Regarding the crescendo: there isn’t one. Each version of the tune, over time, is louder, bolder, than previous ones, but nothing builds a crescendo. It just goes up in little steps that result inevitably from the changes in orchestration. Nonetheless, by the end it is much louder than it was when it started. Similarly with the climax: again, there isn’t one. When the piece is really near to the end, Ravel just steps aside into a different key for about four measures, so that when he immediately steps back again, it feels like the resolution after a climax that wasn’t ever really there. Just the cigarette, you might say.

We all think it is dumb, redundant, and a bit low class. But it is cunning beyond belief. Think of this piece as empty if you like, but it is far more sophisticated than it sounds. You think you know exactly what is happening, but you really don’t.

©ajm 2006

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Here are links to
My Web Home Page
"La Grenouille dans le fauteuil" which is my general Blog
My Agent's web page and even to
The Milwaukee Symphony
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© ajm 2006

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