FIVE O'CLOCK FOXTROT

Ravel's 'Five o’clock Foxtrot' is from 'L’enfant et les sortilèges' (The Child and the Spells) – a one-act opera about a rude, destructive child who is scolded by his mother and then reprimanded by the objects and animals he’s damaged and hurt. In the early 1920s Ravel was entranced by the new sounds of American jazz and ragtime he had heard in Paris’s cafés and nightclubs and he began to incorporate ‘jazz effects’ (as he called them) into his compositions, including L’enfant et les sortilèges. Amonsgt the opera's numerous characters are a Wedgwood teapot and a China teacup. In the segment entitled How’s your mug? they sing a bizarre duet in pigeon-English and quasi-Chinese, sometimes singing over each other in entirely different keys. This playful, jazz-inspired ragtime sequence became known as 'Five o’clock Foxtrot' in the 1930s after various dance bands took it up as an instrumental number. This lively little number would make an ideal encore!

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