Since the bullfight always takes place in the late afternoon when the sun slants across the arena, in the pictures you see of a bullfight, the matador and bull cast heavy, elongated. Coney Island Fun House shadows across the ground. In a sense this is just, since a bullfight is a fight of shadows; there is the real fight and then there is the fight of shadows-the symbolism, the man, the beast, the crowd, the doubt (faint as it may be) as to the outcome. There is also the music.

It would be hard to imagine a whole genre of music devoted to tennis matches or golf tournaments, thrilling as these sports may be to their enthusiasts. A Yankee baseball game does not call for anything other than Take Me Out to the Ball Game-but bullfighting has managed to create its own music, and even its own opera, Carmen.

A lot of words, some sentimental and some probably silly, have been spilled out over bullfights. And much of this information is inaccurate, since it seems to ignore the basic fact of a bullfight. A bullfight does not begin with a bull, nor does it begin with a matador. It begins with a trumpet. It is a spectacle with music, and its music is as much a part of it as the combat between man and bull.

The trumpet blares and the ritual has begun. The matadors parade to the box of the Presidents (whichever official is conducting the fight) to the sprightly music of the march-like pasodoble, characteristic of most corridas.

The picadors are in the parade, too, and the horses, and also the bandenlleros, all keeping time to the music. The music suddenly changes. As the bull is let into the ring, the music becomes wilder, headier. There is no "theme" music more appropriate to its drama than that of the bullfight.

All bullfights are divided into phases, whose duration is decided by the Presidente. He informs the fighters and the spectators that a phase is ended by signaling the head trumpeter to change the music. Bullfighting has often been compared to the classical ballet and they are alike in this respect: the music leads the way. Of course the bullfighter (or ballerina) is what we come to see but to a considerable degree it is the music which sets the tempo and mood. For sometimes the music of the bullfight is as crimson as the blood on the sand, and sometimes it seems as black as the bulls themselves.

It is four in the afternoon. The sun is slanting over the bull ring. The crowd is waiting....Then the trumpet blares out and the fight has begun.

Recorded in Spain - Produced by Simon Rady by Radio Corporation of America, 1959
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