The first performance in the United States of this Bolero as a concert piece was by the Philharmonic Society of New York, Mr. Toscanini conductor, on November 14, 1929.
Tempo di ballo, moderato assai, 3-4. A drum gives the dance rhythm, which is maintained throughout; a flute announces the theme, which is taken up by the wind instruments in turn; then by groups of instruments. There is a crescendo for about twenty minutes, until there is an explosive modulation—brass and percussion instruments swell the din until at last there is what has been described as a “tornado of sound.”
M. Prunières called attention to the fact that Ravel was not the first to repeat a simple, common theme until by the monotony of tune and rhythm the hearer was excited (as are Oriental hearers by the same method). Padilla, the composer of Valencia, had worked this obsession by the repetition of a tune for at least twenty times.
Ravel’s Bolero calls for these instruments: two flutes (and piccolo), two oboes, oboe d’amour, English horn, two clarinets, one E flat clarinet, two bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, high saxophone in F, soprano and tenor saxophones in B flat, kettledrums, side drums, cymbal, tam-tam, celesta, harp, and the usual strings.
OTTERINO
RESPIGHI
(Born on July 9, 1879, at Bologna, Italy)
SYMPHONIC POEM, “PINES OF ROME”
I. The Pines of the Villa Borghese II. The Pines near a Catacomb III. The Pines of the Janiculum IV. The Pines of the Appian Way
Respighi wrote Pines of Rome as a companion piece to his Fountains of Rome. He may yet write “Hills of Rome,” but it would have to be in seven movements. In the Fountains of Rome he set no bird a-singing. In the third section [of the Pines of Rome] “Pines of the Janiculum,” he introduces a nightingale. Perhaps he had in mind the reply of the good King Agesilaus, who, when a man was recommended to him as a skillful imitator of that justly famous bird, replied: “I have heard the nightingale itself.” So Respighi obtained a gramophone record of a nightingale which he heard singing. The movement would not suffer if there were no nightingale in the orchestra.
In the “Pines of the Villa Borghese,” where children are supposed to be playing games, darting to and fro, shrieking, emitting loud squeals of joy, the instrumentation is unusually brilliant, effective, original. One finds more poetic feeling, more imagination in “Pines near a Catacomb,” with the somber opening, the solemnity of the double basses, the mysterious song which swells and dies away. Yes, there is more poetic feeling in this movement than in “Pines of the Janiculum,” with the moon full and the gramophone turned on for the faint voice of the nightingale. At first in the finale there is the rhythm of innumerable steps that De Quincey might have heard at the beginning of his “Dream Fugue” in “The Vision of Sudden Death.” There is the vision of past glories, of soldiers victorious making their clashing and blaring way to the Capitol; with the huzzaing crowd “to see Great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.” This march is exciting by reason of its rhythmic and dynamic increasing intensity and its overpowering climax.