Ravel
La Valse
“Through rifts in swirling clouds, couples are glimpsed waltzing. As the clouds disperse little by little, one sees an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd [letter A in the score]. The scene becomes progressively brighter. The light from chandeliers bursts forth at fortissimo [letter B in the score]. An Imperial Court, around 1855.”
So reads the note in the score to Ravel’s La Valse. He had thought of writing an orchestral tribute to Johann Strauss Jr., to be called Wien (Vienna), as early as 1906. In 1919 he decided to make the idea a reality when he took a commission from Serge Diaghilev to write a piece for the Ballets Russes. By that time, however, World War I and its aftermath had shattered nostalgic fantasies of Viennese balls. So when Ravel looked back to his former goal of writing “a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, mingled … with the idea of destiny’s fantastic whirl,” the destiny Ravel imagined was not gentle or charming, but apocalyptic. The composer George Benjamin describes the music’s effect: “Whether or not it was intended as a metaphor for the predicament of European civilization in the aftermath of the Great War, its one-movement design plots the birth, decay and destruction of a musical genre: the waltz.”
Ravel played a four-hand piano reduction of the work for Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, Francis Poulenc, and several other guests in 1920. According to Poulenc, Diaghilev pronounced it “a masterpiece,” but said that it was not a ballet but “the painting of a ballet.” Poulenc was shocked on his mentor Ravel’s behalf, writing that Ravel provided “a lesson in modesty” by simply leaving the room. But Ravel never worked with Diaghilev again.
Ravel published the work with the subtitle un poème choréographique (a choreographic poem) and premiered it in December, 1920, with the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris. It was a hit in the concert hall, and in 1928 Bronislava Nijinska proved Diaghilev wrong by choreographing La Valse for the dance company of Ida Rubinstein. Unfortunately, Rubinstein also premiered a ballet for Ravel’s Boléro a few days later, eclipsing La Valse. Finally, in 1951, George Balanchine (Diaghilev’s former student) premiered a successful dance for the New York City Ballet based on La Valse and Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, a 1911 keyboard suite based on works by Franz Schubert.
The first evidence that La Valse is not a straight parroting of the older waltz form comes in the opening bars, when bassoons, double-basses, and a bass drum play fragments of a waltz, as if heard in snatches from a distance. String mists obscure Ravel’s dancing couples, who are finally revealed by a stroke on the harp that unleashes a lushly scored melody for the full orchestra. A series of alternately sweet, brisk, or grand waltz variations follows. The work seems headed toward a climax when the bassoons and string mists from the opening return. As melodies from the the original variations are sounded, the fluttering woodwinds, swirling strings, and swelling brass become ominous, threatening. Our nostalgic memories have taken a dark and unexpected turn, and as the gong crashes and the propulsive waltz melodies become inescapable, the dancers are caught up “in destiny’s fantastic whirl.” The final bar — the only one not in waltz time — brings the music to an abrupt and emphatic close.