Foot Rest Competition & Composer of the Week - Maurice Ravel!

The Foot Rest Competition officially begins this week!  

Nice work to everyone who has already been answering the blog questions and tracking their practice time - you're well prepared!  I will be keeping track of how many points a student earns in these two areas each week.  The competition goes for 5 weeks, starting this week and ending Nov. 2nd.  The winner will be announced the following week.

Our Composer of the Week is:

Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel was a French composer and is often classified as an Impressionistic composer.  Though he and fellow 'Impressionistic' composer Claude Debussy did not like using this term for themselves, we still tend to classify them as Impressionistic composers (similar in style to Impressionistic painters).  Ravel was very revolutionary and a bit of a rebel.  He was a part of a group of poets/artists called Les Apaches or The Hooligans! 🙂

Bolero by Ravel

Bolero is possibly Ravel's most famous work.  It is an incredibly exciting orchestral work with no form & builds in volume and excitement up to the end!

Questions for Listening:

If you were to create a movie or play about this piece, what would it be about?

What instruments do you recognize?  Are there any you don't recognize?

There are 4 major sections of the orchestra - strings, woodwinds, brass & percussion:

Which one do you hear throughout the entire piece?

Musically Yours,

Miss Liz & Henrietta the Cat