WHAT IS THE REAL OLYMPIC THEME?

With the Vancouver Winter Olympics upon us, get ready for a lot of pomp and circumstance set to music. The theme most of us associate as the theme of the Olympics isn’t the official Olympic theme. That piece, with it’s beginning timpani cadence and distinctive brass theme, is Leo Arnaud’s Bugler’s Dream. It was written in 1958 as part of Arnaud’s Charge Suite. Its connection to the Olympics began in 1968 when ABC began using it in its broadcasts for the 1968 Grenoble, France Winter Olympics. The tradition of using Bugler’s Dream to score television Olympic broadcasts lives on today.

The official Olympic theme is The Olympic Hymn, also known informally as the Olympic Anthem. It is played when the Olympic Flag is raised and was composed by Spyridon Samaras with words written from a poem of the Greek poet and writer Kostis Palamas. The first President of the International Olympic Committee, Demetrius Vikelas, chose this as the Olympic Hymn, which was performed for the first time for the opening ceremony of the 1896 Athens Olympic Games. But, it wasn’t declared the official hymn of the Games by the IOC until 1957. In the following years every hosting nation commissioned the composition of a specific hymn for their own edition of the Games. America’s most famous version of an Olympic hymn was written by John Williams. He composed Olympic Fanfare and Theme for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

WHAT IS THE REAL OLYMPIC THEME?

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