Concert Comparison Assignment

It’s the evening of Thursday, March 14th, and you’re headed to the [[band concert]].

You drive to Hall Auditorium. Or rather, you drive to Uptown Park’s lot, park there, and walk five minutes to Hall, because it’s a Thursday evening in Oxford, and the rain has finally stopped, and street parking is a nightmare. People are filtering into the auditorium as you arrive. A few students stop by a desk to drop off their IDs as proof of attendance, while parents and grandparents mill about in the lobby. You take a program from an usher that you know and head up the stairs to the [[balcony]].

You head for the front row of the balcony and settle into an end chair on the far left, with a good view of [[the stage]] and a pleasantly empty seat between you and the next concertgoer. The chair’s seat is crooked, sloping gently to the right, but it’s worth it for the view. Glancing down, it seems like the balcony was the popular choice—a few families and groups are dotted across the ground floor, but up here, nearly every chair is filled. You settle in, [[program]] in hand.

The stage below you is unoccupied, but rows of chairs are set out neatly, and a variety of percussion instruments have already been set out ahead of time. As you watch, a girl in a black dress enters from the wings, flute in hand. Other black-clad performers follow, taking their seats and warming up with varied, discordant bursts of sound. After a few moments, the conductor strides onstage, and the audience goes quiet as she steps up the podium, lifts her baton, and [[begins the concert]].

<img src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s2ltxjxATJ4/XKmLlwEqNZI/AAAAAAAAAS8/Z2_ZiUO7hkMcm_f5tIJeoc5Py49GAD-BACLcBGAs/s640/IMAG4733.jpg"> The concert’s title page reads, “<i>‘Over Land and Sea’</i> with the Miami University Symphony Band”. It looks like there are five songs lined up. You glance at your watch. <i>7:30.</i> The concert should start [[soon->the stage]].

The first song is bright and sweeping, chimes ringing out across the hall. What really catches your attention, though, is the second song: [[First Suite in E Flat, by Gustav Holst]].

You hadn’t recognized it by name, but the moment the band begins to play the first movement, you are catapulted back in time by Holst himself. You played this piece in your high school’s [[wind ensemble]]—you’d know that [[melody]] anywhere.

The details are fuzzier now—it was at least three years ago—but you liked this piece enough that the countless rehearsals stick out in your head. You’ve played clarinet since fifth grade, and although you’re out of practice now, you’d like to pick it back up sometime. Hearing [[this piece->melody]] makes you miss it even more.

The first movement, <i>Chaconne</i>, begins with the low brass. It is filled with consonant harmonies, offering a sweeping tune that starts out smooth, then rises and is punctuated by percussive hits and accompaniment. It shifts briefly into a minor key before rising once again to the climax, where the brass play a broad, heavy melody before dropping out and leaving only the bright high note in the flutes and trumpets. If anyone in the audience is moved to clap, they hold themselves back. We all know there’s [[more]].

As the second movement begins, you remember playing it—all it takes is the first bar of light, rapid eighth note articulation. This one is your favorite. This movement shifts into duple meter, led first by a bright, brisk brass solo which is later joined by additional homophonic voices. Then comes the [[clarinet solo]].

The first-chair clarinetist (you assume—she’s playing the solo, at least) has almost the exact haircut as your clarinet instructor, though that may be your nostalgia talking. At any rate, she plays just as well. Her solo is smooth and expressive, with soaring high notes and rich lows. As you watch, you can see her whole body leaning and rising with the melody as she plays, and your fingers [[tap along]] with the cadence against your knee.

The third movement begins in a striking contrast to the previous one, with a loud descending line of notes punctuated by a timpani strike before the full band joins in a rapid, broad march. The musicians shift rapidly between and among melodies, moving full-speed into the swell of the piece’s final notes. Silence hangs in the air for just a moment before the hall bursts into [[applause]].

Sheltering Sky is up next, but what captures your ear is what comes after: [[Blow, Eastern Winds, by Joseph Spaniola]].

From the start, the piece suits its title. Woodwinds play first with a measured, arch-shaped line accented by—appropriately—wind chimes, and subsequently joined by brass in low, sustained notes. The woodwind melody quickens and slows at intervals, and then the texture thickens with an additional melody in the upper brass. The polyphonic tune [[continues]], held together by an articulated percussion beat and more wind chimes.

Then the bassoons take charge, and the music becomes lilting, almost dancelike, switching between rhythms and time signatures in a whimsical pattern. You can see a number of the musicians swaying and leaning with the music [[as they play]].

The band’s pitch rises, falls, and rises some more in a shifting stream of melodies, bordering on chaos before unifying in a bright finale and a single note. The percussion’s final notes reverberate through the hall in an auditory afterimage. Then, [[applause->applause 2]].

It is later in the night, and you are home again. Your cat is snoring softly on your lap, and you look over the concert program again. You pull out your laptop, opening YouTube and plugging in your [[headphones]].

The first video you watch is a performance of Holst’s First Suite by the [[Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra]].

The first performance you watch is by the [[Eastern Wind Symphony]], which the piece was written for in the first place.

There are tradeoffs. The recorded versions are more polished, and at certain points the sound seems to be better balanced—you hear melodic lines that had been buried in the concert, and several performances are strikingly crisp and precise in their articulation. Plus, you have control of the volume, so there’s no chance of the ensemble growing so loud that it hurts your ears. Still, the recordings lack a degree of sensory experience. They’re strictly aural—maybe visual, if there’s a video accompaniment—but the music isn’t tactile the way it is in Hall. You don’t feel the vibrations of the fortissimos in your chest, and you can’t lean in to see the musicians moving with the music as they play. You don’t find yourself moving to the music, either, and you’re a viewer, not an audience member—there’s certainly no applause.