We used to play a game with the kids when they were little to keep them occupied on long journeys.  It was called, “Draw the Music”.

The idea was simple.  I played a cassette of music and they drew or wrote what picture it made them think of.  The music had to have no words, of course, otherwise it suggested itself.  Classical music was good for this, as they had no pre-conceived ideas about it being high-brow or not cool.

I can still remember some of their suggestions; and pretty good I thought they were too.

Ravel’s Bolero suggested snakes – and you can see that.

Sibelius’s Intermezzo, a steam train, majestically passing and disappearing into the distance

Dire Straits’s Local Hero – a sunrise

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue – Dracula

ELP’s Romeo and Juliet 9 (aka Prokofiev’s Montagues and Catapults) - a monster

Perhaps the greatest compliment they paid to a composer was to picture a bear as that whomping bass melody in the 1812 Overture which follows that canons and triumphant entry of the victorious troops.  The bit that goes ……. followed by ………… 

How perfect a musical representation, then, Tchaikovsky found to represent the Russian Bear.