# Boring Bolero



## Wildcamper (Jan 28, 2021)

I love classical music and am a regular listener to Classic FM, but there's one piece of music guaranteed to make me turn OFF the radio.
Despite the wonderful difference it made to the careers of Torvill and Dean, it has to be the most boring, repetitive, long-winded piece of music ever written.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I can appreciate why _Bolero_ can irk some folk but I have never grown tired of it and I never fail to play it whenever I have a Ravel binge.


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

I love it. It's especially fun to watch a performance. There are slow changes over time, like the strings going from pizzicati to bowed at the end. One snare drum and another one joins it later. The buildup of intensity. That poor drummer who has to beat the same rhythm for 20 minutes.


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## david johnson (Jun 25, 2007)

You have to listen for the tone colors. That's where the development is.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

Ravel hated it himself, because it became wildly popular but the public ignored his more meritable works. I think Saint-Saens hated Carnival of the Animals for similar reasons too.


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## Aerobat (Dec 31, 2018)

Here's a recording that I know has changed a few minds about Bolero:






This interpretation is easily the best I've ever heard.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Clever little key shift towards the end, too - I like the whole thing not least because it finds its way to that.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Sadly, as with all warhorses, familiarity breeds contempt. I love(d) Scheherazade but Classic FM must have it on a loop because it gets played at some point every day, day after endless day. I can hardly listen to it now! There’s a ton of great music out there that needs to be heard.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Classic FM know their market and are unlikely to rock the boat too much - for every listener who appreciates an unfamiliar work being played there will be two 'casuals' upset because it put them out of their comfort zone. :devil:


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Different recordings, consciously chosen, is generally the way to refresh the experience of 'old warhorses'. _Bolero_ is a bit unusual in its repetitiveness, obviously, but it is still possible to find a lot of nuances in it, this could even become a thing to cultivate, albeit musicians in particular would probably be better at defining those nuances concisely.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

david johnson said:


> You have to listen for the tone colors. That's where the development is.


True. It's like a theme and variations where the variations are in color.


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

Quite frankly, trying to find the nuances and changes in _Boléro _would be like finding hay in a stack of needles.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

- Different tempi (totals at least between 12 and 17,5 minutes), 
- different accents (cf. conductors, even Mengelberg, Scherchen and Stokowski recorded it, among many other eccentrics, often several times), 
- different orchestral/instrumental traditions (say Russian versus French versus German versus Spanish versus South American orchestra), 
- different recorded sound accents, 
- body language from conductor if filmed, 
- the alleged composer-is-conducting-or-supervising recording, versus others,
- instrumental arrangements,

etc.

Stokowski 1940: 12:05

Stokowski 1969: around 13:50. An interesting example IMO. Note the 'swinging', differentiated solos, the recording priorities say at 6:10, the long-held note at the end of the work, etc. 





Paray 1958: around 13:30. A more mechanical, clock-work like approach, the very end less a climax though. 




Munch 1968, around 17:15. More like a slowly marching orchestral movement, less a dancing bolero. Impressive, big and broad buildup, though.





Sabata 1950. 13:15. Poor sound. Interesting, slightly different accents, also in the solos, some faster and waning notes. The end suffers from the poor recording though.





Later Celibidache: typically around 17:30


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

I've collected recordings of Bolero for six decades. It was my entree to classical music after I finally grew sick of listening to "Squeegee the Happy Little Clown."


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Another reason to throw your radios in the bin. I hate radio with a passion. They kill music with constant,. repetition and boring, unimaginative and lazy programming. Play your own music and then you can just suffer Bolero if or when when YOU want to. Death to radio.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Wildcamper said:


> I love classical music and am a regular listener to Classic FM, but there's one piece of music guaranteed to make me turn OFF the radio.
> Despite the wonderful difference it made to the careers of Torvill and Dean, it has to be the most boring, repetitive, long-winded piece of music ever written.


I think of it as music for a sexual experience from start to finish - nothing boring about it.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Astounding music. A desert island disc, for me.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

I need a nice brickwalled version to listen to in the car.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Aerobat said:


> Here's a recording that I know has changed a few minds about Bolero:
> [/video]
> 
> This interpretation is easily the best I've ever heard.


This is a compelling video. The way Celi is looking at the soloists is beyond conducting; it's more like flirtation. At times I was thinking, "Dude, get a room."


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## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

In a recent Berlin Phil performance, conductor Barenboim stood impassively with his arms folded for the longest time, trusting the orchestra to keep the rhythm. Celibidache gets very involved from the start and looks like a control freak by comparison.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

No two measures of the Bolero theme have the same rhythmic pattern, which keeps things subliminally interesting IMO. A long time ago I heard a radio interview with Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet who compared the piece to a train ride. Just before the end there is a key change, "the train arriving," and then the great fanfare with raucous trombone slides as it comes to a halt. It is a solo ballet, commissioned by Ida Rubinstein. If you watch a video of Sylvie Guillem dance Bolero you'll never be bored, not because she's sexy but because she was such an incredible dancer.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Roger Knox said:


> No two measures of the Bolero theme have the same rhythmic pattern, which keeps things subliminally interesting IMO.


That's a great point. Bolero is a very well constructed melody. Well, actually, two well constructed melodies.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Manxfeeder said:


> That's a great point. Bolero is a very well constructed melody. Well, actually, two well constructed melodies.


The two melodies likely have an ongoing romantic relationship but I will _say no more_.  Oh, they do sometimes share motifs ...


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I love _Bolero_!


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## Wildcamper (Jan 28, 2021)

Clearly the majority are fans. I'm afraid that, despite your well reasoned arguments, it's still too repetitive and just goes on and on and on and on and on and on .......
I'm no musical Philistine and am aware of the key and tempo changes etc.
There's just no excitement.
I even tried to watch a Sylvie Guillem performance. Her dancing precision, symmetry and movement is see inspiring. Sadly I couldn't bear even half of it.


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## Wildcamper (Jan 28, 2021)

* awe inspiring


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

These are the 29 stages of listening to Ravel's Boléro:

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/ravel/29-stages-listening-bolero/


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Bulldog said:


> I think of it as music for a sexual experience from start to finish - nothing boring about it.


There is this aspect as above, but also a somewhat darker vision suggests itself--a brilliant sun burning down from a pitiless clear blue sky. We are on a silent, empty boulevard in a strangely empty Spanish town. We hear, first, faintly in the distance, the faraway tattoo of a snare drum. Slowly, inexorably, the drumming increases in volume as the source approaches, dimly seen at first, but revealing itself as a mass, a phalanx, of slow-marching men dressed in the garb of the Franco Falangist Party. They approach, the music growing louder and louder and more compelling, more inexorable, like that which might accompany a theoretical Roman Legion--the unstoppable swaying rank after rank of grim automatons......

In this sense, _Bolero_ is somewhat akin to the visions conjured up by _La Valse_, a glimpse into the darker side of Ravel's fascinating musical mind. Or mine.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Strange Magic said:


> the unstoppable swaying rank after rank of grim automatons . . . In this sense, _Bolero_ is somewhat akin to the visions conjured up by _La Valse_, a glimpse into the darker side of Ravel's fascinating musical mind. Or mine.


I thought it was about a bunch of guys watching a girl dance until they break into a knife fight. I guess we all hear things differently.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

The problem with Bolero on the radio is that the station will often use compression/equalization to boost the sound level in the earlier parts of the work so they can be heard above the traffic and drive noise on car radios. The gradual crescendo is completely lost. I had one recording of Bolero that lacked the crescendo. It went directly into the trash.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

geralmar said:


> The problem with Bolero on the radio is that the station will often use compression/equalization to boost the sound level in the earlier parts of the work so they can be heard above the traffic and drive noise on car radios. The gradual crescendo is completely lost. I had one recording of Bolero that lacked the crescendo. It went directly into the trash.


No-o-o-o-o-o-o! I need that recording for listening in the car.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Manxfeeder said:


> I thought it was about a bunch of guys watching a girl dance until they break into a knife fight. I guess we all hear things differently.


If Bolero was played in reverse I would hear my own life. Of course it's not; so I don't worry about it.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> In this sense, _Bolero_ is somewhat akin to the visions conjured up by _La Valse_, a glimpse into the darker side of Ravel's fascinating musical mind. Or mine.


I never thought of it that way, but it fits the historical situation.


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## Guest (Feb 1, 2021)

I love the Bolero; the melodies are haunting, the orchestration magnificent, and the apotheosis amazing. It requires a good performance. The Munch/Boston Symphony recording is much too straight laced for me and it takes the magic out of it. In Karajan's 1960's BPO recording it seems that the soloists are allowed wide latitude to make it their own (and show off) and the result is superlative. Many other wonderful recordings out there.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

I like the Bolero by Schnittke (from Master and Margarita OST)


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