beyond the wide world's end

Yesterday was performance day. WindFest has been going on up at the college for the past three days; EHS performed first thing Saturday morning. We played; I went home, changed, and ate something, then went back to Central to spend the rest of the day at the music building watching bands play. Some of them were okay -- nobody was horrible; WindFest is invitation only -- and some of them were really good. The CWU Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble also played.

The Symphonic Band played the first movement of a piece called Ghost Train, and holy cow, amazing. Amazing. (Okay, that was weird. I'm listening to Marc Cohn right now, and what just came up was his song Ghost Train. Creepy!) Ghost Train is about a ghost train in the desert, and you can hear it -- hear the train, slowly creaking to the life, and oh my God, I really can't adequately describe how amazing it is.

The Wind Ensemble played Music for Prague 1968, which was...God, amazing, but it's not a pretty song. It's not supposed to be a pretty song. In 1968, Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviet Union; this piece symbolizes that. There's a piccolo solo, which my flute teacher plays; she describes it "as the only beautiful part of the whole piece". It symbolizes hope. The third movement is all percussion; the snare drum symbolizes the military marching on Prague. Prague is also the city of a hundred bells, which have been used to warn of approaching armies for centuries; the chimes and bells imitate them. In the last movement, it's -- basically organized chaos. The vibes go nuts, imitating the sound of human screaming as the city is invaded and the tanks roll in. I left after that; a couple of band kids from another school said, "Now I never want to listen to music ever again."

Olympia High School played Red Cape Tango, from the Metropolis Symphony. Based on Superman. No, really. And -- I can't flutter enough here -- it was the most amazing thing I've ever heard. Just -- Red Cape Tango came out in 1993, which is the same year Death of Superman came out, and Michael Daugherty, the composer, deliberatley based his piece on that comic. He noticed that in some of the panels, it looked like Superman and Doomsday were locked in a deadly dance, almost resembling the tango. And so he wrote Red Cape Tango as part of his Metropolis Symphony (composed for the fiftieth anniversary of the Superman comics; he released one movement every year), and god, my friend Ellora's friend from Olympia High was right: it's epic. There's this thing with the cymbals -- I was watching them, and there are two cymbal players, one on either side of the hall, and they're playing back and forth, just off each other, like a clash of the titans. And there's the Dies Irae, played by the bassoon and the, I think, either chimes or timpani, symbolizing the death, and it's -- the Red Cape Tango because of the dance, and because of that iconic image of Superman's red cape fluttering from a lightpost, and just -- oh my God. *waves hands*

And also, I saw the musical again tonight. And really want to write fic. But I can't, because I have to work on my novel.