Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – a YouTube Star

In 2012, I was honestly surprised to find out that the video to a pop song by some Korean guy beat all possible records and broke YouTube’s views counter exceeding its limits. Of course, pop music’s feature is its massive character, it’s meant to be popular worldwide and cover the widest range of audience.

Classical music, unlike Pop, is a much narrower sphere aimed at the limited audience. No matter how beautiful classics are, tastes differ and the crowd prefers what’s mainstream.

In this regard, my big pleasure was to find out that a few days ago one of the most well-known classical masterpieces – Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” – became another ‘YouTube star’ by passing the 100 mln views milestone. Isn’t it great that a huge music work like that is in the row of videos most viewed by the people? Could Vivaldi imagine something like that back in 1725 when his set of four concerti was premiered in Amsterdam? It still far from Psy’s Gangnam Style’s 2,6 bln views yet but I think it’s already an important sign.

I sincerely hope that classical music will become more popular among the young people of today.

Maurice Ravel’s Bolero Is Free

Composing one of his last works, Maurice Ravel had hardly thought that this one would become his most renowned and well-known piece of music. “Boléro” was intended to become a ballet to be commissioned by the talented actress and ballet dancer Ida Rubinstein, a most charming and attractive woman, on top of that, who asked Ravel to orchestrate 6 pieces by Isaac Albéniz' known as “Iberia”.

Ida Rubinstein (1913)

Portrait by Antonio de la Gandara 

However, another orchestration to that piano set already existed (by Enrique Fernández Arbós), so Ravel did not want to sort out the copyright issues. Instead, he decided to create a completely new piece. One of composer’s interests was experimenting with dance themes. He loved to reinvent and restyle various dances, so the one-movement “Boléro” (the name of a Spanish dance too) became a perfect foothold for that.

The sensational popularity and success that followed became a sheer surprise to Ravel. Premiered in 1928 in Paris, the musical work was a big delight to the public. The author, however, was not always pleased with the interpretation of his creation on stage. Ravel often judged the conductors for the too fast tempo. Even Arturo Toscanini’s premiere of “Boléro” in New York (that made the work popular in the USA) did not please the composer, for the same reason – a too fast tempo!

These disputes, however, did not stop the ballet from becoming one of the most popular masterpieces in the history of music. According to the French Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers, the performance of “Boléro” begins every 10 minutes somewhere in the world. Just think about it!

And more figures: $60 mln is the sum of the royalties earned by the copyright holders of the famous piece since as long as 1960. But on May 1, 2016, this flow of royalties has stopped. Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro” has officially entered into the public domain and is free now.