It’s easy to think of a composer writing a piece as a romantic gift to a potential lover. Wow, lucky guy/girl, we think. But what about when a composer writes a masterpiece as a friendly gift to a 6 & 7 year old girl & boy? Bah, ungrateful little brats!

I’m kidding, of course. But still, we can be sure that this young pair had no idea of the honor bestowed upon them when Maurice Ravel wrote his Mother Goose Suite as a present for them. Though the original composition was for piano, within a year Ravel had expanded the work into a full ballet and orchestrated it. It has since become a beloved classic of “children’s’ music” (that is to say, music for all ages). The suite includes tells some common fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, Little Ugly, and Beauty and the Beast. It ends with this gorgeous pastorale, The Fairy Garden, which doesn’t tell any specific story, but instead captures the simple rapture of children listening to a good tale.

Maurice Ravel wrote “La Valse” as a commission by the famous ballet choreographer, Sergei Diaghilev (who also commissioned the Rite of Spring, and many other famous early 20th century pieces.) Diaghilev rejected the music, saying “It’s a masterpiece, but it’s not a ballet. It’s the portrait of a ballet.”

Indeed it is a masterpiece. There’s plenty of clichéd waltz material here, but it’s presented as a parody. It doesn’t play like the countless standard 18th century European waltzes. It’s more like a drunken dream about going to a posh party and getting swept up in the music and dancing. Imagine approaching a large European manor home. You can hear the distant music inside, you see the fancy dresses and carefree partygoers. You enter the home and are overwhelmed by the music and the rhythm. You dance and dance, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes with your lover, sometimes by yourself. Eventually the champagne kicks in, and everybody starts getting wild and out of control. The music, and the party, end abruptly and you are thrown out the front door. 9/10 would waltz again.

A piece of music, written about a piece of music? That’s sooooo meta …

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” (famous quote attributed to Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Socrates, and Nicolas Cage.)

French composer Maurice Ravel‘s (1875-1937) most famous piece is probably Boléro. The piece is basically a one-minute melody, repeated 17 times. The tempo (speed), rhythm, notes of the melody and the harmony remain virtually unchanged from the beginning to the end. Some might call this insanity (the snare-drum players definitely call this insanity, because they play the same two-measure idea over 150 times, unchanged, until the very end of the piece. If you don’t believe me, take a look!)

Oddly enough, people seem to enjoy this insanity. So what makes it exciting? First: each time the melody is repeated, Ravel changes what instruments are playing, exploring a wide palette of orchestral color. Second, the whole piece is one gigantic crescendo – it starts soft, and grows to a full blow-your-ears-off loud. Turn your speakers up and make sure your boss isn’t around.

More than one person (two, to be exact) have told me that they love to start this piece with the volume turned all the way up – and they see how long they can last until they HAVE to turn it down.

Thanks to Larry, who gave the little push I needed to start this blog!