Yesterday coming back home we listened to Bolero by Ravel in the car and her eyes were wide open listening to the beat of this amazing song. Little by little she relaxed and fell asleep.
Today I put it on again while I was watching Bruno Bozzetos’s animation and she started moving around the living room following the beat (she is 14 month old).
I think this is a beautiful song to share with you little ones. The melody is passed among different instruments and the music is built over an unchanging rhythm played on drums that remains constant throughout the piece.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Boléro (1928) became Ravel's most famous composition, much to the surprise of the composer, who had predicted that most orchestras would refuse to play it. Ravel was insistent that the work should be played at a steady and unvarying tempo
It is usually played as a purely orchestral work, only rarely being staged as a ballet. At the premiere in Paris a woman shouted that Ravel was mad. When told about this, Ravel smiled and remarked that she had understood the piece.
The larger movie Bruno covers all of history, evolution itself, from first origins of life as goo oozing out of a Coca Cola bottle, to beings spawned in the ocean, dinosaurs, the ice age, the pyramids, Christianity, skyscrapers. All life as we know it on a remorseless trek forwards, save for the ape who cheats and murders on his journey, in strict time to the beat of Maurice Ravel's music.