Bolero, Op.19

In 1833, when he wrote his Bolero, Chopin had never been to Spain. To judge by the main A minor section of the piece, which is approached by way of a virtuoso C minor introduction, he seems to have imagined the bolero being danced to much the same rhythm and, presumably, to much the same steps as the polonaise. But few composers in France at this time had little idea of what was special about Spanish music apart from a few stylised dance rhythms.

If Chopin had written a work actually appropriate to the spurious Souvenir d’Andalousie title imposed on the Bolero by his British publisher Wessel (who had clearly never been to Spain either) he would have given the Parisian salons quite a shock. Clearly, Chopin’s intention was not shock but to impress, to charm and, in the dance itself, to intrigue with the occasional mild exoticism in the harmonies and in the melodic line carried by the right hand over the rhythmic pattern so rarely absent from the left.

An incomplete sketch for Bolero, incidentally, was published in Paris in in 1876 as Chanson de Zingara: Souvenir du voyage en Espagne, which outdoes even Wessel in commercial deception.