La Valse

I tend to have a highly visual response to music -- if I find something really engaging, there will be a visual narrative going on in my head while I'm listening. Some things, like opera, tend to provide their own scenarios: it's hard not to visualize Don Giovanni or Das Reingold while listening to Don Giovanni or Das Reingold. Other works are more open to interpretation, and there are some that sometimes present themselves as soundtracks for segments of my life, or the world in general.

The second strongest response I have is to visualize a dance -- I choreograph things in my head, if the music is sufficiently visceral. (No, this is not limited to rock or pop -- Schubert can be amazingly visceral.)

One work that has been subject to both reactions is Ravel's La Valse. I always visualized, at the beginning, a glittering ballroom -- Vienna, perhaps in the spring or summer of 1914. A beautiful, richly gowned woman is led to the floor by an elegant but faceless man. They are the height of fashionable society, and as the music begins to find its rhythm, they embark on a graceful waltz. But gradually, the music becomes strident, the dancing more intense, and there are explosions, the tall windows along the side of the hall shatter, great crystal chandeliers crash to the floor, the floor itself cracks and the cracks become chasms, and as the woman's panic increases, her partner's grip becomes more and more unbreakable, the devastation more and more frightening, until she is left standing on a pinnacle, staring at the devastation around her, completely unprepared to deal with it.

Pick a time period -- the past week, the past year, the past six years, since Reagan, since JFK, and think about the events and the context they created.

Or just read the headlines.