Ravel Boléro, the book – ResMusicaResMusica

Accompanying the exhibition presented at the Music Museum – Philharmonie de Paris until June 2025, the catalog “Ravel, Boléro”, under the direction of Lucie Kayas, is intended to be a beautiful book in its own right.

It is the house of Maurice Ravel which opens the work thanks to a specific iconography, reproduced on dark colored paper, well differentiated. First, the ceramic plaque of the “Belvedere”, then an exterior view zooming out as it were, then the interiors, so refined: the living room, the bedroom, the office, and finally the piano to plunge into the heart of the universe of the composer. The tone is set. Other photographs of the places will come on the concluding pages, including the small garden and its mossy pond, so intimate.

Eighteen chapters structure the whole on the model of the eighteen entries of the score of Bolero. Musicologists, composers, writers and artists take turns to evoke this or that Ravelian facet, illustrated by the images of objects, drawings, paintings and scores exhibited as part of the exhibition. Between each section, extracts from correspondence by Ravel or about him punctuate the reading.

The writer Claire Houdart evokes the new influences, including Japonism, in the decoration of the Belvedere, which she describes, and which we find in the composer's music. The musicologist François Dru presents the writing and the journey of the score of a work whose “magic remains intact”, “an astonishing machine” for Pierre Korzillius, curator of the exhibition, which goes so far as to be greedily compared to a dessert by chef Klaus Mäkelä. The Ravel specialist, Manuel Cornejo tells us about Ravel's penchant for a “flamboyant Hispanism” in the words of the poet René Chalupt, while for the musicologist Emmanuel Reibel, Ravel remains “a big, amazed and prankster child”, “a magician of 'orchestra' for the publisher Jean-François Monnard. The composer's strong attraction to dance is obviously central when we talk about Bolero. “The soul of dance can be perceived in the very spirit of its compositions, in its rhythms and pulsations » underlines Claude Abromont. Obviously a section is devoted to the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who commissioned the work, to whom the ballet is dedicated and to whom she danced in 1928. The choreographer Dominique Brun paints her portrait of a strong and pioneering woman (“her taste for beauty », “the intensity of its presence” when “its musicality sets it in motion”). The percussionist of the Orchester de Paris, Nicolas Martynciow, talks to him about the difficulty of playing the Bolerothe importance of the placement of the snare drum… The trance is even further explained from the point of view of a psychoanalyst. And to come back to earth, the complicated succession of Maurice Ravel is the subject of an entire chapter: “a matter of copyright”.

This catalog book, neither biography of the composer, nor musicological essay on the work, is understood more through touches and impressions, notes and thoughts, significantly enhanced by the beautiful iconography relating to the BnF collections, described in a section by Mathias Auclair, general curator in the music department.

In short, a beautiful book that can absolutely live its own life.

Read also:

Bolero, the film: two hours at the museum

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