La valse,
poème chorégraphique pour orchestre (a choreographic poem for orchestra), is a work written by
Maurice Ravel between February 1919 and 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:
"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."