‘Boléro’ - Maurice Ravel, 1928
For some reason, this song makes me think of Lawrence of Arabia. It’s the kind of music that would be played on a film like that, with long pan shots of hundreds of Arab soldiers on camelback.
But I digress. ‘Bolero’ is one of my favourite pieces of classical music. It sounds like a Viking raid, or as the soundtrack to a battle in Crimea in the 19th century. It plunders, it blunders, it insists, it has no real quiet bits (I only ever listen to the finale), and I love it. There you go, unashamaedly commercial. It’s one of the most popular classical pieces ever.
The repetitive nature of Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ has been criticised, but that is really the charm of the piece - it doesn’t try too hard, and it aims to be bombastic, written as it is for a large orchestra. Ravel himself was fairly critical of ‘Bolero’, but he was fairly hard on anything he wrote.
‘Bolero’ has been used in so many different ad campaigns, and was used by Torvill & Dean for their 1984 Winter Olympics performance. Of course, it’s been featured in quite a few movies as well. But personally, the movie with the best use of the piece is in the 1977 movie Allegro non Troppo, where it is used as a march of evolution.
Last 5 posts by Dave
- 'Sunflower' - Paul Weller, 1993 - December 18th, 2008
- 'Brilliant Mistake' - Elvis Costello, 1986 - December 16th, 2008
- 'Icky Thump' - The White Stripes, 2007 - December 11th, 2008
- 'Careering' - Public Image Limited, 1979 - December 10th, 2008
- 'We'll Meet Again' - Vera Lynn, 1939 - December 5th, 2008
