Maurice Ravel's Boléro is ballet music for orchestra in C major, composed in 1928 and premiered on 22 November of the same year at the Opéra Garnier by its dedicatee, the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein. A dance movement with an unvarying rhythm and tempo and a uniform, repetitive melody, Ravel's Boléro draws its only elements of variation from orchestral effects, a slow crescendo and, in extremis, a short modulation in E major.

This singular work, which Ravel said he considered to be a simple ...