The main melody swirled around and around....

This morning on the way to work I switched to the classical station on the radio and was immediately swept away by music I never heard before.

It started out very softly softly and built up slowly so slowly louder and louder minute after minute.

It had a kind of military-style snare-drum beat repeated over and over in the background and a theme that played again and again over and over in the foreground – but with different instruments each time and always bigger and bigger and louder and louder.

The drums and the bass gave it a very obvious beat stronger and stronger and the main melody swirled around and around with a vaguely middle eastern sound, I thought.

It seemed unusual to me, not the kind of thing I usually hear on the classical station, but very interesting and enjoyable to listen to. It was also very programmatic, very VISUAL. I thought I could imagine it playing in one of those old WWII movies while columns of tired and dusty soldiers ride tanks and trucks and jeeps, across a desert maybe, just out of one battle, on their way to the next.

I wonder why that exact image came into my mind. I wonder what images other people would see listening to this great piece of music....

The masterpiece ended with a wildly discordant chord and I listened carefully to see if the announcer would say who it was, maybe some obscure composer I never heard of before.... The announcer said today is Maurice Ravel's 142^nd birthday. The composition... Bolero.

Now I have heard ABOUT Ravel's Bolero many times but today, for the first time, I HEARD it! Fantastic!

You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxxCYNNyFNU

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[Check out this book about Ravel. I haven't read it yet so if you get to it first please write a little review I can publish here.]
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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway