What’s the story behind Ravel’s ‘Boléro’, and why is it so controversial?

2 May 2025, 15:00

From enticing myths about what’s been said about it, to Ravel’s own oscillation between despair and gratitude for the work, we delve into the famous orchestral piece, Boléro, and try to unpack its irresistible intrigue and enduring popularity.

A lot of myths swirl around Ravel’s Boléro. That a woman in the audience at the premiere yelled, “Help! A madman!” (to which the composer responded “She’s understood the piece.”).

That Ravel himself called it “my only masterpiece” in correspondence to Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, before lamenting that “unfortunately, there’s no music in it.”

That the piece’s success (in the face of apparently plenty of criticism) made him so wealthy, in life or literally, that when he walked into a casino in Monte-Carlo he turned down conductor Paul Paray’s invitation to have a go at gambling. “I wrote Boléro, and won,” Ravel is supposed to have said. “I’ll let it go at that.”

That Ravel bemoaned the conductor who gave the work its US premiere, Arturo Toscanini, for playing it too fast, to which the conductor had the retort: “it was the only way to save the work.”

That a performance of the work begins every 10 minutes somewhere in the world.

How much these anecdotes have been warped and augmented through history, as many are, it’s difficult to say. But it’s undeniable that there is just something about this work that holds our attention – be it the piece’s history or the maddeningly brilliant music itself.

And what music it is. What did Ravel mean to say with such a repetitive work? Why did it remain so simple, musically speaking? Did the composer find value in it, or did he really hate his own piece of music?

Was it always meant to so suddenly be injected with jazz notes? Is it meant to be hopeful, or full of trapping despair? What is the meaning of it building so incrementally to a climax, which, really defies the rules of orchestral music, at least for the day it was written in?

Let’s dive into the madness (a maybe not) of it all, and discover the story of Ravel’s Boléro.

Four cellists play Ravel’s Bolero on just one instrument

Who was Maurice Ravel?

Maurice Ravel was a French composer, conductor and pianist, credited with being one of the composers to really develop and establish impressionism in music. He was born in 1875 and, coming from a musical family, studied along the path of Paris Conservatoire enrolment.

Ravel studied with composer Gabriel Fauré, but he proved to be unorthodox, and non-conformist (he rejected Wagnerianism, for example, which was considered the orchestral pinnacle in those days and arguably still is today), and he soon lost favour with the Conservatoire, his methods irritating the institution’s then Director, Théodore Dubois.

Ravel went his own way and, painstaking and slow, he built his career up to the point of being one of France’s most famous composers, known for his rich orchestral writing (Pavane pour une infante défunte, La Valse), for his gorgeous impressionistic music for ballet (Daphnis and Chloé), and for incorporating Baroque, neoclassical, modernist and jazz elements into his work.

He was unquestionably an incredible master of melody – just listen to Pavane pour une infante défunte. And of course Boléro demonstrates Ravel’s mastery of melody, relying on just one – and mainly just that – as it does.

When was Ravel’s Boléro written?

Ravel composed Boléro in 1928. The piece slotted into a time when Ravel was about to embark on an incredibly successful tour of the United States.

Europe was a decade into recovery from the devastation of the First World War, with the excesses of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ and neighbouring Germany’s decadent Weimar Republic at full health.

Jazz was getting into full swing and flowing through Europe, influencing the culture of music and dance, and aspects far beyond.

And, at this time, Ravel was probably France’s most famous living composer, building a career that would mark him one of the country’s most famous composers to ever live.

What is the story behind Ravel’s Boléro?

The story of Ravel’s Boléro starts with a commission by ballet dancer Ida Rubinstein.

Rubinstein was a very well known Russian dancer, actress and arts patron, and she performed with Diaghilev's famous Ballets Russes from 1909 to 1911, before forming her own dance company.

When she commissioned him, Ravel planned to create an orchestral version of Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz’s piano work, Iberia, for Rubinstein’s company to dance to. Albéniz was up for it, but the hitch was that the rights to the piece had already been granted to someone else: to the Spanish conductor Enrique Arbós.

“My whole summer’s ruined,” Ravel declared, evidently before knowing the conductor would actually be happy to give up the rights. “Orchestrating Iberia was going to be so much fun. What am I going to tell Ida? She’ll be furious.”

Arbós did eventually give Ravel the rights, apparently, but not before the composer had already started an original piece of music from scratch.

Ever experimental, and a real pioneer of asking questions of form in music, Ravel had long toyed with the idea of building a composition from a single theme which would grow simply through harmonic and instrumental ingenuity.

The Boléro melody apparently came to him when he was on holiday in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in France. He was about to go for a swim, the story goes, when he called a friend over to the piano and, playing the melody with one finger, asked: “Don’t you think that has an insistent quality?” Fateful words, it would turn out. “I’m going to try to repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can.”

The essence of Ravel’s famous Boléro was born.

“Once the idea of using only one theme was discovered,” he said, “any conservatory student could have done as well,” and he completed the orchestral piece relatively quickly.

A boléro is a Spanish dance, characterised by strongly rhythmic qualities to the music, sharp turns and stamps of the dancers, and a dark flavour. The composer had found a single musical idea to twist, to turn – and to gradually turn up in an ingenious orchestral crescendo – for Ida Rubinstein’s dancers to dance to.

Watch these striking ballet dancers revolutionise Ravel's Boléro

What happened at the premiere of Ravel’s Boléro?

Ravel’s Boléro premiered at the Paris Opéra on 22 November 1928, with choreography by Polish dancer and choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, and scenario by Alexandre Benois who had a background with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes like Ida Rubinstein.

“Inside a tavern in Spain, people dance beneath the brass lamp hung from the ceiling,” the printed program at the premiere read. “[In response] to the cheers to join in, the female dancer has leapt onto the long table and her steps become more and more animated.”

The Opéra’s orchestra was conducted by Walther Straram.

Despite how it’s gone down in history, or perhaps hearsay, the piece’s premiere was an unreserved success. There was shouting and stamping from the audience, the sure sign at any classical music performance of an impressive impact on the audience.

Why is Ravel’s Boléro considered controversial?

At the premiere, patrons were perhaps more divided than this read on things suggests. It’s told that a woman shouted about it being the work of a mad man from the audience. Ravel has been recorded as all but agreeing.

But of course he did. The work is designed to be maddening, and in its repetitive to both reflect and bring about madness.

Whether criticising himself or otherwise, Ravel correctly said of Boléro, that it has “no form in the true sense of the word, no development, and hardly any modulation”. That’s all true, and that’s what history documents as the plan from the outset.

Boléro’s ‘form’ is just one ‘A’ section, really, we never get a ‘B’ as such. And nothing happens after we first hear the famous circular tune of the Boléro; it just keeps going and going until that slightly bizarre brass flourish that finishes it off, and finishes it off quite abruptly.

Two main melodic ideas are repeated 18 times. There’s no harmonic or melodic development to speak of. The piece is written in C major – all the white notes on the piano – with some E major, but both simple keys. Boléro features a drum beat that’s repeated 169 times. It’s oddly pleasing, but there is something frustrating – something maddening – about it.

Many struggle with the monotony, and the build up from solo flute through to full orchestra through the same melody over and over again. So the controversy is in the experimentalism – and also simplicity – of the piece itself.

Its simplicity adds to the mystery and intrigue, when taken in the context of all of Ravel’s works. Here’s a man with so many colours in his music, and so many exquisite orchestral complexities and shades at his disposal – just listen to the sparkling music for Daphnis and Chloé – and for Rubinstein’s commission, and for Paris Opéra, he chose to do away with all of that and opt for simplicity and constraint. Constraint to the extent of a straight jacket, perhaps, if we’re to follow the line of thinking about ‘madness’ of that outspoken woman in the audience at the premiere.

Viewed in the context of its origins as a work for dance, it should also be remembered that the choreography and staging of Boléro contributed to any controversy around it. The dance was racy and sexual, and would have pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable at the Opéra in its day.

Hayato Sumino plays virtuosic Ravel Boléro on two pianos

Why didn’t Ravel like his “only masterpiece”, the Boléro – and is it even true that he didn’t like it?

It is unlikely Ravel expected Boléro to become as instantly famous as it did, and his inclination seems to be to downplay any merit it might have.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph at the time, he said: “I am particularly desirous there should be no misunderstanding about this work. It constitutes an experiment in a very special and limited direction and should not be suspected of aiming at achieving other or more than it actually does.”

He liked the piece when he first composed it, asking his friend “Don’t you think that has an insistent quality?” It certainly stuck. And he admitted from the off that, once the melody was locked in, that “any conservatory student could have done as well.”

Done as well. He wasn’t criticising the piece’s simplicity – in fact he used the wording “done as well” – and instead was just being objective about the piece’s simplicity.

Finally, there’s the anecdote about the Monte-Carlo gambling parlour; that Ravel didn’t need to try out gambling, because he already had with his Boléro and that it had paid off. “I wrote Boléro, and won,” he purportedly said. High self-praise from a musical high-roller.

Ravel is known to have been experimental. He played with forms and this was him playing with forms. He just very likely never expected the piece to generate as much instant buzz, and to remain so enduringly popular – even after his death – as it has.

The Boléro has a tongue-in-cheek quality to it; so does Ravel’s own words about it.

Why has it remained so popular?

Boléro was published in 1929, including in arrangement for piano solo and piano duet. It was premiered by famous conductor Arthur Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic in 1929 to wide acclaim.

The quality, and the repetitiveness, of the music makes it memorable and catchy.

The rhythmic, militaristic backing beat from the opening. The plodding tempo. The opening solo flute, resonant in its lower register. And that melody. Specifically that melody’s ability to go around, and around, and around, in a circle.

It gets picked up by the solo clarinet, and then the bassoon comes in to develop the melody, adding those iconic repeated stabs that create tension in the otherwise monotonous tune. And then we get those delicious bassy concluding notes. It all keeps swirling and rolling, until the most unhinged, jazz-inflected finale. The overall result is entrancing.

That’s what makes the piece so iconic. And, when you think about it, they’re all elements – a repeated hook or beat, a memorable melody, an ingeniously simple, repetitive formula – we find in iconic and popular music of our own day.

These qualities have made the piece ripe for capturing the imagination of influential elements in popular culture, including Hollywood and other iconic forums. When Olympic ice skaters Torvill and Dean used the music for their routine and scooped Gold at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, the piece became etched into the minds of a whole new generation of people.

What films and TV have featured Ravel’s Boléro?

Ravel’s Boléro has featured in a 1934 film about a coal miner who dreams of being a dancer which, directly inspired by Ravel’s work, borrows the music’s title.

It was also used in Blake Edwards’ 1979 film, 10, about a lyricist’s midlife crisis, staring Dudley Moore, Julie Andrews, Robert Webber and Bo Dereck.

In 1992, a film about the plight of the percussionist of any Ravel Boléro, made by Patrice Leconte, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

And the music has featured in many adverts, TV shows, and at other events, including the opening ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2024 Paris Paralympics.