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La valse (The Waltz), poème chorégraphique pour orchestre (a choreographic poem for orchestra), is a work written by Maurice Ravel between February 1919 and 1920; it was first performed on 12 December 1920 in Paris. It was conceived as a ballet but is now more often heard as a concert work.
The work has been described as a tribute to the waltz; the composer George Benjamin, in his analysis of La valse, summarized the ethos of the work: "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 himself, however, denied that it is a reflection of post-World War I Europe, saying, "While some discover an attempt at parody, indeed caricature, others categorically see a tragic allusion in it – the end of the Second Empire, the situation in Vienna after the war, etc... This dance may seem tragic, like any other emotion... pushed to the extreme. But one should only see in it what the music expresses: an ascending progression of sonority, to which the stage comes along to add light and movement."Ravel, letter to Maurice Emmanuel, 14 October 1922, in Arbie Orenstein (ed.): A Ravel Reader: Correspondence, Articles, Interviews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 229. He also commented, in 1922, that "It doesn't have anything to do with the present situation in Vienna, and it also doesn't have any symbolic meaning in that regard. In the course of La Valse, I did not envisage a dance of death or a struggle between life and death. (The year of the choreographic setting, 1855, repudiates such an assumption.)""The French Music Festival: An Interview with Ravel", in De Telegraaf, 30 September 1922, in Arbie Orenstein (ed.): A Ravel Reader: Correspondence, Articles, Interviews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 423.
In his tribute to Ravel after the composer's death in 1937, Paul Landormy described the work as "the most unexpected of the compositions of Ravel, revealing to us heretofore unexpected depths of Romanticism, power, vigor, and rapture in this musician whose expression is usually limited to the manifestations of an essentially classical genius."
You know my intense attraction to these wonderful rhythms and that I value the joie de vivre expressed in the dance much more deeply than Franckist puritanism.
Ravel completely reworked his idea of Wien into what became La valse, which was to have been written under commission from Serge Diaghilev as a ballet. However, he never produced the ballet. After hearing a two-piano reduction performed by Ravel and Marcelle Meyer, Diaghilev said it was a "masterpiece" but rejected Ravel's work as "not a ballet. It's a portrait of ballet". Ravel, hurt by the comment, ended the relationship.Orenstein, Arbie. Ravel: Man and Musician, Dover, New York, 1991, p. 78, Subsequently, it became a popular concert work and when the two men met again during 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev's hand. Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel, but friends persuaded Diaghilev to recant. The men never met again. The ballet was premiered in Antwerp in October 1926 by the Royal Flemish Opera Ballet, and there were later productions by the Ballets Ida Rubinstein in 1928 and 1931 with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska.Deborah Mawer, The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: Creation and Interpretation (Ashgate, 2006), 157ff The music was also used for ballets of the same title, one by George Balanchine, who had made dances for Diaghilev, in 1951 and the other by Frederick Ashton in 1958.
Ravel described La valse with the following preface to the score:
Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees at letter A an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo letter B. Set in an imperial court, about 1855.
A series of waltzes follows, each with its own character, alternating loud and soft sequences.
So begins the piece's second half. Every melody from the first section is re-introduced, although differently, in the second section. Ravel has altered each waltz theme piece with unexpected modulations and instrumentation (for example, where flutes would normally play, they are replaced by trumpets).
Once more, Ravel breaks the momentum. A macabre sequence begins, gradually building into a disconcerting repetition. The orchestra reaches a danse macabre coda, and the work ends with an emphatic figure in duple subdivision that is a distinct departure from the waltz rhythm.
The work is scored for 3 (3rd doubling piccolo), 3 (3rd doubling English horn), 2 in A, bass clarinet in A, 2 , contrabassoon, 4 French horn in F, 3 in C, 3 , tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, , triangle, tambourine, tam-tam, crotales, glockenspiel, castanets, 2 and string section.
In 2005 it was transcribed for Symphonic Wind Ensemble by Don Patterson, for the United States Marine Band, and was recorded on the album Symphonic Dances, conducted by Michael J. Colburn.
Celebrating the 100th birthday of La Valse in 2020 (its première in Paris took place in 1920), Belgian composer Tim Mulleman wrote a transcription for Philippe Graffin and Friends for string nonet (4 vn, 2 va, 2 vc, 1 cb). A filmed performance was made possible by Lars Konings.
Linos Piano Trio included a transcription of the piece for piano trio on their 2021 album Stolen Music.
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Ravel's birth in 2025, flutist and composer Nikka Gershman premiered her transcription of La Valse, heard on flute for the first time, at Lincoln Center's Paul Hall.
Frederick Ashton also created a La valse ballet in 1958 for The Royal Ballet. At the premiere Francis Poulenc complimented Ashton on what he thought was the first successful interpretation of Ravel's intentions for the music.David Vaughan (1999). Frederick Ashton and his Ballets. London, Dance Books Ltd. pp. 288–290.
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