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April / May 2006 Contest Results |
Music For War
By
Ed Tasca, Ontario
A review of a
newly –released musical classic.
Can military people simply lay down their arms and let the Tchaikovskies
of the world play out war-like fantasies through their music? Or,
another way to look at this question is, Can music replace war entirely,
given that war can’t be danced to?
That’s the
question I continued to ask myself while listening to a new release of
Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. If I heard it said once, I heard it a dozen
times: Tchaikovsky is brilliant, but he may be suffering, like humanity
itself, from a split personality, which asserts harmony of nations on
the one hand and the need for aggression on the other. This may explain
the complex power of his music, and the fact that the right side of his
moustache is shaved off.
Looking closely
at the new 1812 Overture, we see how the gentle reeds are gradually
replaced in the opening bars of the overture by the tympani, portraying
the enemy advancing on our artillery. Our artillery, played out sleepily
by the wispy piccolos, are caught off-guard playing liar’s poker out in
the ravine and become completely confused and surrounded.
But the tide
soon begins turning. That wily string legato emerging at bar 188/28:01
brings the news that one of our sentries sleepwalked into enemy lines
and told them we wanted to hurt them if they didn’t go home. The enemy’s
reaction is swift and demonstrative, expressed vividly by the French
Horns declaring, “You can’t scare us, we don’t like you either.” The
double bass too is in no mood for trifling. It thrums to life, demanding
that the strings and the horns grow up. The bassoons can only laugh.
Thankfully
though, the flutes arrive in bar 260/29:09 just in time to calm
everybody down, and provide a humorous anecdote or two. Regrettably,
it’s all short-lived, because the trumpets return, and through their
fluid, persuasive beauty, signal the beginning of our carpet bombing,
which sends the enemy into rapid retreat. The cellos ask the question,
who has Alsace-Lorraine?
A new theme soon
creeps in with the ominous edginess of military subplots, tempered by
blaring tubas - not a bold blaring but a shaded blaring with subtle
hints of berries. Bar 300/12:29 then leaps into a new theme with the
tympani suggesting that the strings may be conscientious objectors, and
the strings in counterpoint stating categorically that the tympani don’t
know what they’re talking about.
But finally at
bar 370/16:04, the brass sound out a victory march, while the achingly
emotive English horn solo evokes a lone bugler on the battlefield asking
the question, “Who cares about Alsace-Lorraine anyway? This battle is
taking place around St. Petersburg!” No one has an adequate answer, not
even the strings.
This bravado
performance of one of man’s greatest musical conceptions confirms in my
mind that music as an instrument of change achieves just about as much
as war does, so the next time I hear drummers having a drum battle or
banjoists dueling with one another, I’m going to send them off to the
Pentagon as ambassadors of good sense.
http://www.robertbenchley.org/index2.htm
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