Originally composed as a ballet, "Boléro" is Ravel's most famous work and has been widely used as a theme in films in modern times. The music is a Spanish dance in which Ravel experimented with repetition which takes the place of the development of the music. In this musical work commissioned by a Russian ballerina in 1929, Ravel intended the repetition as a metaphor for the effects of propaganda on the people. However, the choreography gave the repetitive theme another dimension: that of an increasing intensity evoking an erotic act. But "Boléro" also has its amusing sides: when, on the evening of the first performance, someone shouted that it was the work of a madman, the composer is said to have murmured "That person has understood". Ravel had also said: "My Boléro should bear the epigraph:'Get this into your head...".
Despite its repetitiveness, its extremely rhythmic and mysterious character, enriched with the colours and the atmosphere of some exotic dance, have made "Boléro" one of the most popular classical music of the 20th century.
And some more mystery: The image by which we represent this piece is a painting titled "Unravel Bolero" of a woman who after having finished this work, started suffering and finally died from the same neurodegenerative disease as the one from which Ravel had also died years ago. The painting is an actual bar-by-bar representation of the music score "Boléro" and seems to have been the result of an overactivity of the part of the brain which integrated the visual and hearing senses, probably an early symptom of the deadly disease.