A bouquet of melodies

Bouquet of Peonies on a Musical Score
by Paul Gauguin (source)

You select the finest flowers for a bouquet. Likewise, a composer selects the finest music for a suite. But while a bouquet of flowers fades eventually, the suite is everlasting.

Suite is a French word indicating 'sequence'.

Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had composed a ballet called 'The Nutcracker'. The ballet was not a success, but Tchaikovsky extracted a twenty minute suite that is immensely popular and loved.

Not so soon, bassoon

The photo, and the paragraph below are the works of The Bassoon Brothers.

We have an important mission! We want you to enjoy the bassoon! Whether you play it or just appreciate the instrument’s tone and versatility we want to share our enthusiam about the instrument with the world. We also want to prevent the extinction of our wonderfully versatile family of double reed instruments by encouraging as many of you as possible to take up what is commonly called the “belching bedpost”. If that is totally out of the question, at the very least, enjoy it and tell your friends that it is not an oboe!

What a wonderful undertaking to save the bassoon. We need such missions and

The queen played the harp

The much-maligned queen of France, Marie Antoinette loved her clothes, hunts, privacy, scandals, affairs, bitchiness and the harp.

She was a harpist and a simple woman, thrust into the French court and it's compulsory political pettiness.

Yet, we have been taught in schools, probably to bite monarchy in favour of our democracy, that Marie was a villain

Classical music with a story

William Tell, the legendary Swiss patriot is forced to shoot the apple from his son's head. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images). Image courtesy NPR.

Today's music comes with a story -- it will help you delve deeper into the music. It will aid imagination!
And it helps that the music in focus is one of the most popular ever. The overture to an opera called 'William Tell', composed by Gioacchino Rossini.
Chances are that you have heard parts of this music (especially the finale) in advertisements, films and ... somewhere, you must have.

You were informed about the

The musical theme

This under-two-minute piece by Michel Corrette will acquaint us with the musical theme.
Wikipedia has a good definition for the musical theme:

In music, a theme is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based.

We will listen to the 'recognisable melody' in this composition by French composer Michel Corrette.

This piece is identified as

What is interpretation in music

We come to one of the most important and interesting topics in classical music. Interpretation. "I like this version better. It's slower and brings out the melody" or "I love how fast and jazzy this sounds".

And there's no need for any theory. The selected music is that powerful. It will add to your music wisdom! A hundred percent.

You know about interpretations, of course you do. Remember your favourite song, and then remember the covers of the same song; some of them have

The Bolero mystery

Can you stand Maurice Ravel's iconic composition 'Bolero' for its entire length of fifteen or so minutes (varies)? It has melody and apparent simplicity and is widely popular. So why not then? It sounds repetitive to many listeners. This is what Ravel thought of it:

"orchestral tissue without music" — of one very long, gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution. - Ravel on his own work, which is an iconic classical piece.

Also, Bolero is adored and loved so much, but then there's this

Perseveration, an Alzheimer's symptom, is the obsession of repeating words