On November 22, 1928, at the Paris Opera, a woman reportedly stood up and screamed that the composer was mad. Maurice Ravel replied that she was the only person in the building who understood the piece. This deep dive tells the story of Boléro, a work that began when a copyright conflict blocked Ravel from orchestrating Albéniz's Iberia for the dancer Ida Rubinstein and he instead plinked out a single melody with one finger.

The hosts break down the machinery: a snare rhythm repeated 169 times, two 18-bar melodies alternating over it, one diatonic and one jazz-inflected in the Phrygian mode, a sopranino saxophone part in F for an instrument that did not exist, and the key-doubling trick of piccolos in G and E over a French horn in C that fools the ear into hearing artificial overtones. They also cover the abrupt shift to E major before the  ...