Composer Ravel COMPLETELY DESTROYS a Waltz
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- Ravel's La Valse is a kind of "conceptual art" piece of music that plots the birth, life and death of a dance-form. But did the intervention of World War 1 affect it's ending?
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Research:
George Benjamin on La Valse:
www.jstor.org/...
borisgiltburg....
Glyn Maxwell: On Poetry:
www.amazon.com...
Music
Ravel: La Valse
• Video
Ravel: Bolero
• Ravel: Boléro - BBC P...
Tchaikovksy Waltz from Sleeping Beauty:
• Tchaikovsky, Waltz fro...
Johann Strauss II: Wiener Blut Waltz
• Johann Strauss - Wiene...
Johann Strauss II: Blue Danube Waltz
• Video
Die Fledermaus Overture:
• Johann Strauss - Overt...
Ravel : Menuet Antique
• M. Ravel, Menuet Antiq...
Landler:
• Tanzgeiger beim Dornb...
Walzer:
• Lieserl Walzer mit der...
Also check out Yuja Wang's amazing performance of the piano version:
• Yuja Wang plays Ravel ...
Elgar: Introduction and Allegro
• Elgar - Introduction a...
![State of Play | September 24, 2024 [ENGLISH]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fVs0suPHAX8/mqdefault.jpg)
Shout-out to @tantacrul for help with the laser beams and fire in the thumbnail 😄🔥
David Bruce Composer The thumbnail is the best part, too, reminds me of the war of the worlds aliens
Come on Bruce, who is the guitarist you mentioned?
@@IverCardas Yeah, do tell, I mean gosh!
I was thinking of tantacrul when I saw it!
'twas a fine video 👏. Never listened to the piece before. Thanks!
I always imagined La Valse as a kind of parable of obsession. Beautiful couples in a great ballroom delight in the waltz and the heady feelings it engendered. But it’s never enough. More, more, delight turns to obsession and ultimately madness and death as they dance on till they finally drop. A kind of mass hysteria/Red Shoes ending.
Ever read Edgar Allen Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death"? It has a scene almost exactly like the one you describe: desperate people waltzing. Check it out.
That's what I thought it meant too. Like the ID bubbling up! Freud and Jung in Vienna at the same time. The movie back in the early 70s "Savages". When I heard it was somehow war related it started to sound too pretty.. Like Ravel was still too polite or civilized to really write it in. This video makes it clearer.
Ravel destroys a waltz with TELEOLOGY and DECONSTRUCTION
ok, that was epic
Made me laugh out loud, thank you
Waltzes don’t care about your teleology
It's super effective!
fucking philosophy too
I guess you could say he…unRAVELs it.
No, I'm not sorry.
"Unraveling Ravel" was the name of my final Music History paper.
@@AugustBurnsSam Solid title 👌
Maurice to be learned from his compositions if you pay close attention
@@PrinsTan clap clap clap
Did you raise your pinky finger to your lips after you typed this?
My piano teacher at one point in her life had a teacher who was a student of Ravel's. I'll never forget when I played the Menuet from the Tombeau de Couperin for an Armistice Day celebration concert (I much preferred the Forlane but the Menuet was easier on the ears in the opinion of the concert organisers). I received guidance from this teacher, which she, in turn, had received from her teacher many years prior, with the chain leading back to Ravel himself. I've been absolutely enamoured with all of his music ever since, but the Tombeau will always hold a special place in my heart.
I'm certain there's a theory nerd much nerdier than myself just waiting to pounce on this comment and correct me, but I agree with your interpretation that the harmony at 8:06 is more about the geometric movement than the harmonic relationships in and of themselves. And to tie in the anecdote above, a lot of the guidance my teacher gave me does make me think that this would be the case. While about some things he was very particular (despite what most performers seem to do, "absolutely no rubato whatsoever before the very end" she told me he had said) it seems that about others he was more about communicating a feeling -- I like how you put the bit about how the Valse begins, something about a "primordial swamp". Sort of painting a picture with big, broad, brush strokes -- but absolutely not impressionist! Wouldn't want to upset Ravel himself! ;)
Hi, this is Jack who you met at a student workshop at the centre for young musicians a few weeks ago. Just wanted to say I really enjoyed meeting you and wish for you to continue making your videos!
Hi Jack! It was great to meet you too. I hope it was useful - I felt my brain melting towards the end so not sure how coherent I was! All the best
"Serious Theory Nerd" was the name of my first punk band.
I'm gonna call my prog band: Just fucking around
Ravel has been my favorite composer since I discovered him when I was 15. I had to play jeux d'eau at the piano even though it was kind of out of my league haha. I learned many passage of the concerto in G. For me ravel stands out by his perfectionism, and minimalist approach. He choose the notes you have to play very carefully. If you like romantic piano pieces, make yourself a favor and go check all the Valse nobles et sentimentales.
This is literally me
Ravel Shapiro DESTROYS waltz with facts and logic.
a
@@WEEBLLOM gulliom will you destroy a waltz too
@@nou6990 a
OMGGGGGGGG NOT RAVEL BEING ALPHA
Sigma ravel DESTROYS the woke waltz
This is one of my favorites! I always loved the juxtaposition of the merry waltz and the underlying darkness bubbling underneath, but I always just kind of it emotionally. Cool to see sucha cerebral breakdown of it.
"Ravel's mastery of orchestration borders on the obnoxious..." I feel your pain. Lol. It's not unlike Bach's mastery of fugues. Oh yes, and thanks for the chordal breakdown of those chromatic passages. Always curious about how composers "invent" new harmonic structures that while discordant make sense to the human ear.
It's all based on intervalic consistency. When in doubt, just use ascending patters of minor 2nds or 3rds :)
Mostly by using patterns and solid counterpoint.
Trial and error plays a part. It's underrated as fuck.
Ravel was a creative genius. I know that word is bit overused these days but Ravel truly was. The more I delve into his pieces the more I am amazed by his genious and his perfectionist nature.
@@6695John13 I concur. But I think I understand what David means when he remarks jokingly on Ravel's prowess at orchestration. As a composer, really as an artist, it's not enough to just have technical virtuosity. The cliche is art has to say something about the human experience. I will say this, though, and I think David might agree, that being "clever" is very human. It's why we humans get jokes.
What happens 8:04 harmonically gets easier to see when you plot it on a neo-riemannian Tonnetz. The octatonic descending progression of the lower parts is just one diagonal band on the tonnetz. Of the flurry above, from the chords in sets of 3, each 2nd is part of the octatonic lower part. Each firist has only the 5th of the triad in common with the stuff below. The tritone substituted one, I think, is replaced with a Major in stead of a minor, because the minor one would include the third (which is the top note) that would have been part of the octatonic stuff below, and appearantly he didnt want that.
Rated R
For Ricci positive-definite
Oh wow, at first I thought you were just saying needlessly complicated gibberish, but turns out it's all true. Neat!
I'm so glad you're talking about this piece, it's one of my absolute favorite pieces of all time.
Those progressions are absolutely stunning, totally crazy but makes perfect sense.
with facts and logic?
Dave, I’m just a musical simpleton, so analyzing the snazzy contrary motion of multiple harmonies would give me a big headache, it boggles my crippled mind, but I love to hear you talk about this stuff. 😁Cheers!
It was my dream when I was a piano performance major to find another piano major and a visual arts major who could put together a film of dancers and war-clips while we played the 2-piano version of La Valse. A pity I had to drop out for mental health reasons >.< oh well.
When we played this piece in my orchestra, our conductor made a similar point in a short speech to the audience; Ravel may have denied it, but this work illustrates the direction that the war gave the arts at the time so well, no matter if it was intended that way exactly. Just ripping apart that happy, bourgeoise, colonialist lifestyle that the waltz embodied. Everything leading up to the ending, and especially that quadruplet in the last measure is just so... devastating... it is way more emotional to play/hear than a piece titled "La Valse" should have any right to be. Thank you for this great video!
I just heard la Valse on the radio yesterday, for the first time in my life. Now I'm seeing a video you just made of it... How funny.
I see La Valse's distortion and destruction of the 'valse' as being a parallel to the collapse of the Austria-Hungarian empire. There is a moment, where the pianist strikes a cluster (actually 3 tones in the extreme bass register but it sound like a cluster) which I see as a point of no return, where it becomes clear the the empire will endure the inevitable.
I speculate Ravel would have written a totally different composition had he finished it before the war. After the war and all the atrocities he, being a Frenchman, simply couldn't have afforded to write a piece about the beauty of the Viennese waltz. His love for this genre was devastated by the outcome of the war.
I played the two pianos version. The kind of playing you have to use stretches from the grace of Mozart to the pounding chords of Prokofiev and beyond. I loved it for its uniqueness!
Ooh, that would imply why he would deny it was influenced by the war! Maybe he'd try to keep politics out of it so he could have as large of an audience as possible...
"COMPLETELY DESTROYS" you're a master of RUclips titles.
«master»; you’re a master of RUclips comments.
i call it intellectual prostitution
Thank you for this very clear analysis of La Valse. I'm a Ravel's music lover, specially orchestal pieces, but I love all his music, and La Valse was the work that took me more time to understand.
When I found out about this piece I didn't know anything about it and I loved it instantly because it felt to me as if Ravel wanted to unearth and praise chaotic and barbaric soul of what became the most formal and rigorous construct, the dance. How under the scripted and false expression of a delicate waltz there's an urge for a comfortably chaotic tearing apart of this structure. Which extends naturally to other social interactions. It's an ode to dissonance.
I think the reason why people can't let go of the world war reading is that they associate dissonance with bad and evil, but this piece is trying to tell that dissonance is another way of sounding good and it marries it perfectly with the more classical harmonies we're used to.
That's my 2 cents anyway
I like that, very interesting thought, thanks.
Waltz or 3/4 is my favorite time signature. Thanks you for a wonderful channel!
Bb4 is my favorite note. This piece has both my and your favorite things! It's so good! This makes me so happy that I will refrain from debating you, since my favorite time signature is 5/8 -- so much better than yours.
By the way, what is your favorite dynamic marking?
You're doing videos on everything I like: Ravel, Sibelius, Adams. Waiting for some Debussy soon then. Love your channel!
La Valse is probably my most favorite of Ravels music - amazing piece, with nice melodies and bombastic moments.
I think this might be more of a case of polysemy. It seems to me that Ravel may have originally, perhaps even always, intended that bombastic finish to represent the exhausted mass of humanity on some great phantastic Viennese dance floor crashing to the ground with the close of The Waltz; as if the whole thing consisted of the total sum of all Viennese court balls, all Strauss waltzes -- the Platonic Form of The Waltz.
And yet, the world in 1920 was not the same world it had been in 1906, and even if that was the sole intention of the piece, it could never be heard as only representing that after the species-wide trauma of the Great War.
So, in a sense, the piece resides in that liminal space between Victorian/Edwardian optimism and 20th Century fatalism, a sort of Lost Generation lament on the world as it had been -- The Waltz in Effigy.
I suspect he intended to write the apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, put it to bed once and for all and all that it had represented
Ravel really plays alot with dances and their shapes; for the anecdote all 3 songs from the "Don Quichotte à Dulcinée" cycle are based on traditional Spanish dances^^
Also, thanks for the great video David, fascinating as always! :D
An interesting observation is that these long linear pieces that have the shape of one long build-up are also common in prog- and post-rock. My favorite example is Tendresse by Man is not a Bird. Such a structure can create an epic, larger-than-life effect, which I am personally very fond of
Great piece of work (yours and Ravel's). However, I would have loved an analysis about the rhythmic killing of the waltz as it strikes me everytime. For me it's the climax of the piece, it sounds like the waltz overtakes itself.
I had a terrible rowl with a teacher at the Vienna conservatory about this!
I held it was Ravel's intention to pay Homage but also deconstruct and collapse the Waltz.
Aaaand that's an instant subscription for me. I first encountered La Valse in concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a non-headliner offering, and it left me stunned and in tears. Thanks for the excellent breakdown of just why it is such an effective piece. (It's funny, but I never saw it as the death of the dance-form but the death of the care-free world the socialites had built up. All I see in my mind's eye while listening to that ending is a hundred couples in white tie, swirling around a gilded ballroom, oblivious to the fact it's also on fire and crashing down around them. Just my two cents.)
But of course, the death of the dance-form was the perfect musical image of the self-destruction of the old, elegant and brittle social structure. Both broke apart under their own unsustainable weight
2:49
I'm like
JUS.. BRAHMS
Love these analyses into specific pieces of music which go deep. Would love more in this vein! As always, greatly appreciate your content.
Cheers!
I second that!
Once you've seen George Balanchine's ballet La Valse, you'll never think of this score this same way again. Thank you Mr Bruce.
@David Bruce I have no idea what you are talking about when you talk about musical technicalities, ..... but it's fascinating.
Zur konstruktiven Mitarbeit fehlt es mir zwar klafterweit an Kompetenz. Nichtsdestotrotz kann ich sehr wohl
erkennen, dass dieser Beitrag ein Vorbild an Pädagogik, Inspiration und Weitwinkel ist.
Toll! Danke!
Absolute favorite Ravel piece. So glad to see someone give it the attention it deserves!
In that example (8:22) you can think the process beginning on beat three of the first bar (Cmaj against Cmin--slightly obscured by the sharing of the G). If you start there then every third chord in the right hand combines with the chords in the left hand to form Oct (0) (0134679t), the process ends when you reach the point at which the roots are at the point furthest removed from eachother (TT). In this analysis the most metrically accented chords are the "non-chord tones" which the preceding chord acting as a harmonized incomplete-lower-neighbour and the proceeding chord being understood as a harmonized "arpeggiation".
8:45 - Sounds like Giant Steps
Hi, thanks for the nice video. Easy to follow and learnt something new. Although the juxtapositioning of ww1 footage and the final section of La Valse at 5:30 felt a bit off, especially after you said in the end that Ravel explicitly denied the war symbolism in the piece. I didn't know that btw.
One of my favorite orchestral pieces!!!! Thank you for doing a video on La Valse and Ravel!
I cannot but help hearing in the final pages of the Waltz the literal death of the Hapsburg empire as I visualize the image of the imperial two-headed eagle collapsing in tatters on an imaginary dance floor as the piece comes to its abrupt and sudden end.
This is that one video that makes that nice and cool channel become one of your favorites and you have to keep one eye out for every new upload. What a FANTASTIC and impactful analysis.
Great video! I think the passage around 8:08 creates another hemiola. The purpose of the right hand notes geometry is to create a feeling of duple meter against the triple meter on the left hand.
I love learning about music like this. You are a fantastic teacher.
I always thought of la Valse as the destruction of the dance(the waltz).....when I mentioned this to a conductor once when he was conducting it with us, he didn't think of it that way......I'm reassured that it strikes some this way........love your channel btw......
This is a very good and educational presentation of the work La Valse by Ravel....!!! My compliments!
When I first heard La Valse some 55 years ago, I just assumed that it was an allegory for the rise and fall of the Habsburg Empire, not so much a waltz.
EXCELLENT video! I have long loved La Valse and regard it as one of the more beautiful and terrifying works in the repertoire. To me it always conjured images of ghosts; of skeletons in rotting finary, mindlessly whirling through darkened ballrooms in dilapidated manor houses. They are as oblivious in death as they were in life - carefree and decadent as the world around them spirals into madness and death. Is that what Ravel had in mind? Does authorial intention matter? I don't think so. Not in this case. On the technical side, I so appreciate your incisive dissection of the more striking sections, with animated score to boot! I have been considering adding my own contribution to the odd sub-genre of the "spooky waltz" (i.e. Danse Macabre, The Mephisto Waltzes, La Valse, etc.) Not sure I can add anything new, but I would love to try. This video has given me additional motivation. :-)
[edited to get rid of an example that I had confused with a different piece...oops...]
brilliant as ever David.. informative and entertaining..
That old clip from the war that you used twice had an actual person dropping, presumably to death. in it..
which has really affected me having a quiet night in to wait tele..
to see a real death.. what a thing to be reminded of..
Loved your analysis! I'm a musician, and we're working on this piece right now. I'm so glad to get a deeper understanding of what I'm playing, so I can play it even better. This is the first of your videos I've seen, and I've subscribed so you can continue teaching me. I also shared this video with our ensemble so others can get the benefits, too! Thank you!
The stubble looks great on you, David.
Thank you for this video. I have always really loved this piece, but recently I have found it harder to enjoy because of its episodic and fragmented nature, and strangely I have grown to appreciate Bolero more. I really enjoyed your musical analysis, especially pointing out the weird and wonderful harmonies. You used the example of poetry in your contextual analysis, and I'm very familiar with this notion that the First World War changed everything in the arts from my own studies as an English undergraduate. This is obviously quite easy to see in poetry, especially if you look at the war poets. Without wishing to diminish the importance of WW1, I finding it much more fascinating to consider that, rather than provoking a musical revolution, WW1 seems to have arrived right at the end of a period of musical revolution, especially in harmony. When one considers that 'L'apres midi d'un Faune' was published in 1894, and 'Pierrot Lunnaire', 'Bluebeard's Castle', 'The Rite of Spring', and later Mahler were all pre-war, the significance of the war, at least to musical modernism, seems to be overstated. It is also significant that, as you say, Ravel began 'La Valse' long before WW1, and specifically planned the ending. I don't doubt that there is some influence of the war in the piece, not least in its change of name, but I wonder if it runs any deeper than that, unlike 'Tombeau de Couperin' where I think the effect of the war is quite plain, but which is quite pointedly neo-classical in a way.
"Ravel, your orchestration is too good, otherwise good job"
Wow, even Hendrix didn't go that far to destroy the waltz with Manic Depression!
I always thought that the amazing unison passage the 3rd measure after Rehearsal #96, particularly after all that amazingly thick orchestration, brings to mind a dying soul gasping for breath. All of a sudden, it is VERY personal. This is among my top 5 favorite orchestral works of all time, and I feel that you and I look upon its raison d'etre in a very similar light. Thank you!
I came across this channel by accident, and loving Ravel's music "this side idolatory", I decided to listen. I always thought myself a bit of a Ravel expert, attended Perlemuter's Masterclasses, played the G major concerto in public ... in other words, fairly knowledgeable and very cocky. Loved your analysis (all but the silly comicstrip stuff). I learnt a lot and your visual explanations are great. I could follow them but music loving friends would not. They are very fast and in general very short. I shall follow your channel.
In the rare case that this might be still relevant, my take on 8:00 are the two possible diminished scales on A, in general, there is whole-half in the right hand, half-whole in the left hand, moving in contrary motion in different speeds. (3 vs 2 which also mirrors the frequent hemiolas).
Left hand is straight forward all major chords in the half-whole dim. scale downwards.
If you view A as temporary root, the right hand adds the fifth (E) as is often the case when using whole-half dim. scales.
This is then repeated with every shift a minor third upwards, only ever adding the fifth of what temporary root we are currently in.
Ravel does these kinda moves around diminished scales often so I think it's reasonable to interpret it like this.
Ravel's Bolero was written as an instruction piece for his orchestration students.
We studied it in my grad level orchestration class.
Absolutely amazing content, I thoroughly enjoyed this and learned a lot.
in reverse order, right-hand reveals itself: F# A C - A C Eb - C Eb F# (Gb) - Eb Gb A ---- Chords are arranged as a succession of diminished chords with common notes. connection of 5th is clear D F A - A C# E then each of both hands goes their direction. (The symmetry can be seen from the beginning C /G#m - A/Dm, C/G#m, ? should be Eb/Dm). The upper part goes chromatic with the diminished 5th substitute of every 3rd note.
Or in upper part, you can say m2 + P5 where following 6 -4 inverted chord, which is of course not a passing chord here; this arrangement allows successive movement with ease within a polychord territory; has a previous note as it's fundamental- that is to say, 5th of the previous chord becomes root.
Question is do you "have to" classify these connections vertically? they all have their own life, their own plans.
that was a revelation ... thank you for making me less ignorant
I was reluctant to click on this video at first, as most on the subject of music are just painful. What a wonderful discovery to find a channel from someone who actually knows what they are talking about.
In his Fin de Siecle Vienna book, Carl Schorske analyzes La Valse in just this way: as an expression of the ending of the old European order in World War I. With the Agadir crises and the alliance system, any person alive in 1910 could sense a smash up was imminent.
Another wonderful video. Packed full of information. And analysis. The piece was intended for Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, but Diaghilev rejected it, saying, it's "not a ballet. It's a portrait of a ballet." Which ended their friendship. As a pianist, I love the solo piano version, rather than the original four-hand composition, in which Diaghilev was introduced to it.
It's an incredible piece to see live, I'd never heard it before until I saw it performed. Definitely one of the most wild rides I'd been on experiencing a piece for the first time.
In that puzzling chromatic section, if you take the 3rd note of each upper chord and the 4th in the lower, combine them to form a hex digit and convert to ASCII with a UTF-8 character set it spells "jfMz8", so that isn't it. Love your videos!
Now we scan youtube for all the videos containing that in the URL
I heard, long since forgotten where, that Ravels Bolero was a comment on the power ,at the time, of mass production in the USA ; ie. the US churning out stuff at an unprecedented level. I like this notion + ,for me ,Bolero ,which up until coming across this interpretation had seemed ,in conception,rather ,odd ,suddenly made sense!
Thank you for this beautiful video. Some conductors like Charles Munch and George Pretre were completely convinced about this war music, others no so much.
I really think conscious or not it's the true and many elements we can have in Concerto pour la main gauche that also evoques the war influence.
I also find in the way he develops la valse some other elements in the themes, for example insert Tyrolean elements into a Viennese waltz, as in number 18, and Spanish elements, such as the castanets he uses in the section that begins at measure 36.
Bruce, you are an ABSOLUTE fresh wind ---- I love your videos, they way the embrace MUSIC - of all genres, of all places ---- and the fact that you simply share your well educated and thoughtful opinions - without going into a "know-it-all" vibe --- also they way you invite viewers to respond, give their own opinion, perhaps add to the conversation. Thank you !!!
sorry man: DAVID !!!!!
I really admire your work, David. Good analyses, nicely compressed into snackable bits. Makes me want to spend more time listening to these fantastic pieces of music you describe so well. Thank you.
An illuminating talk on one of my enduring favourites. Thank you for allowing me to hear it with fresh ears!
As Theory/Composition Nerd / Composer, I always appreciate and enjoy your videos. Compositional Analysis and human autopsy are very much the same. When all is said and done, you may (in fact) be able to say (with absolute certainty) what made the music work (or not) just as you can say what killed the human (or not), The net result, though, is that both the music and the human are dead. As you know, the manuscript represents a blueprint of what (theoretically) the music will sound like. True Music is very transient. It lives (and dies) in time. It exists for a moment...and then it's gone. I love analyzing music; but it is strictly an academic pursuit. Creating music is the real joy.
What I have listen to La Valse I and that it was written early in the 20th century, I have associated it with WWI and the ending of the life symbolized by the waltz. I think it could have been used in Fantasia (except that the subject would be too dark for Disney). The early part of the animation would be in a ballroom in Vienna full of waltzing dancers while slowly as music goes on, through the windows marching soldiers would appear out of the mist or darkness. At the end the dancers fade and the war begins.
At 8:47, it looks like Ravel is focusing his harmony on a diminished 7 cycle. The bottom, with A F# Eb and C spell out a fully diminished 7 chord, and on top, the tri-tone substitutions spell out E G Bb C# which is another fully diminished 7 chord. J.Cole actually does this on his song ATM, with the chords being Cm Ebm and F#m. Not a seventh, but the roots spell out a diminished triad. I think that’s what Ravel is doing possibly?
Also, a half/whole diminished scale has 2 diminished 7 chords in it. And the diminished scale that starts with both of these outlined diminished 7 chords, let’s say Edim7 and Adim7, has the other diminished 7 chord in it. E diminished scale has both Edim7 and Adim7, and vice-versa.
I love David’s commentaries. He teaches me a lot.
THAT. THUMBNAIL. IS. GOLD.
Bit of help there from the legendary @tantacrul
@@DBruce Amazing
Amazing understanding of the piece, brilliant!
Thank you David.
Your videos - this one in particular - are fantastically inspiring.
I just read a book about the trenches of WW1. The connection to Ravel’s work makes a lot of sense.
About that chromatic passage, it really sounds like two universe crashing together. Ravel is creating a polyrhythm between the harmonic rhythm on both textures. there's also a pattern emerging when cycle starts again in the down side with the diminished root movement Ao7 (La Fa# Mib Do). Another diminished between top notes - thirds of red chords - Bo7 (Sol# Si Re Mi#). Top notes of minor triads moving in chromatic motion are always starting in a note of Bo7 that moves to a note of Ao7.
I understand it as some kind of polytonality, where you have both sonorities living together. As you said everything is supported buy independence in directionality of motion.
Ravel planed to call the composition 'Wien', he changed it later into 'La Valse'. The worldpremiere of the orchestral version took place in Paris, on the same night as he himself performed it, as part of a duo, in it's two pianoversion in....Vienna.
Got to see this piece being performed live by a professional orchestra yesterday.. It's so great
david, this is simply fantastic of you to do this. thank you. j.
Ravel is my favorite composer, and I’ve somehow never heard “La Valse”??? Can I really say he’s my favorite, then? 😂 Also, amazing video and analysis on Ravel and this piece! I’m gonna go listen to it now. 👏🏻
Fantastic analysis of a marvelous piece of music! Thanks a lot, David! You asked how to interpret the chords in this masterpiece in terms of tonality. I think you shouldn't bother. In my opinion Ravel explores the boundaries of tonality, sometimes crosses the borders and explores the territories of atonality. Remember that Bergs Wozzeck was composed in 1922, La Valse in 1920.
this is excellent, thank you for this! love ravel
an excellent video as always-- I was laughing at the title lmao
It seems to me that La Valse is a perennial piece and it feels very appropriate for our time, once again.
"They would shoot you if they knew your cosmopolitan sympathies". Thanks for another informative and captivating clip. I learn something unexpected every time you share a clip. Thank you David.
Great video, very interesting! Two minor corrections: its Landler, not Ländler and at 2:40 you talk about the dotted rhythm - which is actually not a dotted rhythm at all. Look at the score of Wiener Blut, its all quarter notes. This is the traditional way of phrasing in Viennese Walz: Eins - ZWEIII - (drei)
it's Ländler, that was correct.
Source: Am German
@@mattiascheiwiller4539 Well, I am from Austria and in every Bundesland I've been, we say Landler.
Interesting. I looked it up and Landler is commonly written (but not spoken) Ländler. You live and learn, I guess.
Your description of a waltz emerging out of the fog sounds exactly like Ravel’s description of the piece on the score. I still wonder what it was that made Diaghilev reject it.
Great video! Now I want to study more about Ravel!
Lovely analysis
8:10 wow ravel is so jazzy ahead of its time
@@MR-gz9lm most of the people that hear coltrane and think he invented this kind of harmony but really ravel and debussy have done it before. If ravel was alive today i bet he would compose amazing stuff
@@raz7590 Well, of course. Jazz is a blend of European harmony with African-American rhythm and sensibility.
@@MR-gz9lm Rimsky-Korsakov was the ahead of his time one.
I´d say cheers David, for this upbeat Ravelian not-so-valerian genius insight.
Ravel once famously said "Don't interpret my music, just play it". If I remember correctly he was answering a pianist who asked him how he should interpret "Une barque sur l'ocean".
I understand the need we sometimes have to sort of find a meaning for a piece of music, or a story that goes along with it.
But more often than not, composers don't imagine a specific event, or scenario for their pieces. They just...write music...
With this particular piece, I'm puzzled why you want us to believe at all costs that its composition was influenced by the 1st World War. If you say yourself that Ravel himself has denied it, why still insist on it?
It's an absolutely stunning piece of music, regardless weather the 1st World War had anything to do with it or not.
Whether*
Sorry, I'm that guy.
I agree about the insisted interpretation. It's like people insisting LotR is WWI allegory despite Tolkien declaring his hate of allegory.
Any artist who wishes to create for generations to come is wise to deny temporal allegory. It will always be up to their descendants to find those connections without diminishing their achievements. But the artist must think herself free, to create, in the closest approximation to a vacuum as they can muster.
I've always found the self-destructive whirlwind at the end of La Valse to be a metaphor for the shattering of the Ancien Regime of Old Europe, even before I looked into the piece analytically. Our visceral reactions to Homer, Wagner, Shakespeare, Beethoven, count as much as what they might have thought of their work at the time. If not, they would not endure as psychological touchstones, in my opinion
Because what the artist says about their own work doesn't define what the audience perceives. And because authors are not somehow more aware than other humans of how their inner thought processes work, and thus don't really know their own unconscious influences.
In fact, when the author actually takes the time to say something isn't in their work, it's a good indication it actually is, as it means multiple people independently heard it in the work. Authors don't need to deny interpretations that are clearly not valid.
Ever since Death of the Author, we've rejected the idea that the author's interpretation of a work is inherently the correct one. And while this argument isn't "Death of the Author," since it uses the history of the time it was written, it still isn't required to accept what the author says.
Especially an author who tells people playing his music not to interpret it. Such is impossible, unless you want a completely rote, mechanical sound like a computer would make. And that isn't what we get in any performance of his pieces. We clearly feel emotions in this man's work, which means he put them there, whether he realizes it or not.
Hello David, i recently subscribed and still am watching the back catalogue of your videos. Thank you for these informative and interesting and also very entertaining videos.
8:05 jazz heads do a double take
For me it was 7:15
To my mind, those final notes rat-a-tat-tated out on the snare drum cannot be anything other than gunfire.
Thanks for the analysis. I've always loved this piece.
That was my thought as well... But would I have heard it in the same way if the piece hadn't been presented as “about the war"? I can't be sure.
@@gerardvila4685 Given the era, I think that Ravel may have incorporated aspects of warfare subconsciously. It wouldn't be the first time that a composer did such a thing.