La valse, poème chorégraphique pour orchestre (a choreographic
poem for orchestra), is a work written by Maurice Ravel from
February 1919 until 1920 (premiered in Paris on 12 December
1920). It was conceived as a ballet but is now more often heard
as a concert work. The work has been described as a tribute to
the waltz, and the composer George Benjamin, in his analysis of
La valse, summarized the ethos of the work as follows: "Whether
or not it was intended as a metaphor for the predicament of
European civilization in the aftermath of the Great War, its
one-movement design plots the birth, decay and destruction of a
musical genre: the waltz." "While some discover an attempt at
parody, indeed caricature, others categorically see a tragic
allusion in it - the end of the Second Empire, the situation in
Vienna after the war, etc.... This dance may seem tragic, like
any other emotion... pushed to the extreme. But one should only
see in it what the music expresses: an ascending progression of
sonority, to which the