Almost 90 years after its premiere, the popular orchestral work is now free to perform.

After a lengthy and complex legal battle, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero has become public domain, meaning that it is available to be performed for free almost 90 years since its first performance. The work has been performed almost continuously since its premiere in 1928, and thanks to its ubiquity it has become one of the most recognisable classical pieces ever penned. It has featured in countless films, television programmes and advertising campaigns, but perhaps most famously, it was used as the soundtrack to British figure skaters Torvill and Dean’s perfect scoring routine at the 1984 Winter Olympics. 

Making an estimated €50 million in royalties since 1960, Ravel’s short orchestral piece, which obsessively explores a simple but enigmatic melody over a hypnotically repeating rhythm, is one of classical music’s most regularly programmed pieces. However, it was received as both a work of genius and a “monstrosity” by Ravel’s contemporaries following its first performance. Mr. Laurent Petitgirard from France’s Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers said: “We are accustomed to saying that a performance of Bolero begins every 10 minutes in the world. As the work lasts 17 minutes, it is, therefore, playing at all times somewhere.”

The controversy surrounding the copyright of Bolero stems from the circumstances of Ravel’s death. The composer was unmarried and childless in 1937 when he died, leaving his works and estate to his brother Edouard, who went on to turn his Montford-l’Amaury house into a museum dedicated to the composer. After Edouard’s death in 1960, a bitter legal battle erupted between several people over the rights to Ravel’s works, including Edouard’s nurse and her husband, several great-nephews and a legal director of a publishing firm. In an investigation by The Guardian in 2001, it was reported that no royalty money had been invested in the maintenance of the museum, and the whereabouts of the money could not be confirmed at all. There is an ongoing sense of confusion over who the beneficiaries of Ravel’s estate are and should be – but as of yesterday, the royalty payments will stop, and Bolero will belong to the general public. 

Copyright infringements for music are notoriously problematic. The “Happy Birthday” tune became tangled in a serious federal lawsuit in 2013 to decide who owned the rights, and 2012 saw works by Prokofiev and Shostakovich taken off the public domain in the United States.