Tone Poem Tuesday

I heard this piece of joyously bombastic music on the radio last week, and as I wondered what it was, I found myself thinking, “This sounds like the kind of thing John Williams would write for the Olympics.” Now, I’m a firm believer that music can never depict anything specifically, but in this case…I was right! The work is not by John Williams, though Williams did record it on an album of such music. It is a piece called Javelin, by composer Michael Torke. It was commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and for the 1996 Summer Games in that same city. Torke has apparently openly admitted the debt the work owes to John Williams.

Here is Javelin by Michael Torke.

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