This was the last of Maurice Ravel's compositions, commissioned by the celebrated film director G. W. Pabst for a cinema version of Don Quixote starring the legendary bass Fyodor Chaliapin.

As Ravel worked on the project in 1932, however, he suffered the increasingly disabling effects of Pick’s disease, a cerebral-neurological condition that gradually robbed him of motor skills and memory while afflicting him with periods of aphasia.

The first public performance, given by baritone Martial Singher in December 1934 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, featured the orchestral version, with an ensemble conducted by Paul Paray.

For the lusty opening "Chanson Romanesque", Ravel chose the guajira dance-pattern, exploiting the quirks of its alternating 68 and 34 meters for word-painting, and enlivening it by sometimes garnishing the 34 with a clashing dissonance.

Against the manic jota that dominates the "Chanson à boire", a tipsy Don Quixote revels in flamenco vocalizing and unleashes peals of laughter as keyboard flourishes suggest the bubbling and sparkling of wine.