Composition in Blue

Anne Adams, a Canadian scientist, had studied math, chemistry, and biology. But in 1986, she abandoned her science career and became a full-time artist. She loved to paint patterns, as in Unravelling Boléro (1994).This piece depicts every single measure of music in Maurice Ravel's classical piece Boléro.What Adams didn't know at the time was that her painting was a symptom of the rare disorder slowly attacking her brain.

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) degrades the speech centers in the brain's frontal cortex, leaving the patient eventually unable to speak. When Adams painted Unravelling Boléro, parts of her left frontal cortex were already deteriorating. But as these areas weakened, creative centers in her back right brain were able to grow and become stronger. Like some other people with PPA, she became increasingly creative as these right-brain areas, which help make connections between sights, sounds, and space, took over.

In Unravelling Boléro, each upright rectangle represents a bar of music. Each rectangle's height represents its volume, and its color represents the pitch of Adams's favorite note in the bar. A key change near the finale of the piece is signaled by a shift to orange and pink.

The final twist to this story is that Ravel, Boléro's composer, may have suffered from the same disease. Ravel's brain disorder, which some modern scientists believe was PPA, eventually took away his ability to speak or compose.The shifting balance of power in his brain may have led to Boléro's layered repetitiveness, the very quality that drew Anne Adams to the piece. Ravel composed Boléro in 1928, at age 53-the same age Adams was when she completed this painting.

-E.P.

Hear the painting for yourself: go to www.youtube.com and watch "Ravel - Bolero - Daniel Barenboim - Berliner Phil.," parts 1 and 2.

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