Circus Maximus

Last night I was fortunate enough to attend a performance of John Corigliano's masterpiece Circus Maximus by the USC Wind Ensemble at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The hall was an experience in itself, as this was the first time I had been there since its completion. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera so I couldn't take any pictures, but the ushers were adamantly disallowing photography inside the hall anyway. The hall is visually stunning (aside from some tacky flowery carpeting and seats) but its true forte is acoustics. A particularly surreal moment occurred before Circus Maximus' 5th movement, Night Music II, which opens with a jazzy phrase by the antiphonal clarinetist, who was situated on a balcony in the right side of the hall. Before her solo I noticed her taking a drink from a water bottle she had brought with her. After finishing she capped the bottle and I heard it clearly from basically the opposite side of the hall. This is the best way I can think of describing just how stunning these acoustics are.

The concert opened with the CSU Northridge Wind Ensemble playing a modern arrangement of Mendelssohn's Overture for Band. I am not particularly fond of the piece but the band sounded fantastic - perfect intonation and balance, thanks in no small part to the venue. They continued with a work by Grainger (who is growing on me) titled Colonial Song, and concluded with a band transcription of Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, by Leonard Bernstein, which was fantastic.

Between the two short intermissions was a performance by the CalArts New Millennium Brass of Nick Didkovsky's Slim in Beaten Dreamers, which, if I am reading the program notes correctly, was partially written by a computer. This piece was avant-garde in its fullest, and unfortunately not the good kind.

The program ended (and rightfully so) with Circus Maximus, which is easily the most amazing piece of music ever composed. Corigliano appeared on-stage for about 10 minutes prior to the performance explaining the premises of the work and its eight movements. If I haven't already raved to you about this piece I urge you to read the work's program notes and this review of the premiere performance by the UT Wind Ensemble in 2005 (particularly the last three paragraphs). In a nutshell Corigliano creates a metaphor between the Circus Maximus of ancient Rome and the constant sensual bombardment of the modern world (but those links can explain it much better than I can). A few examples of Corigliano's genius:

• Form. Even the simplistic seventh movement, Prayer, is a masterpiece of musical form, starting quietly as I described but over a few minutes building to a full on-stage band tutti, in the most familiar tonality of any section of the work. The piece simply had direction - a huge contrast to the Didkovsky piece earlier in the evening.
  
• Ingenuity. Every instrument was used to its fullest capabilities. Perfectly in-tune minor seconds in the clarinets (must have been extremely difficult to pull off) inthe fourth movement, Night Music I, create a surreal, pad-like sound. Horns convincingly imitate the howl of wolves in the same movement. Percussion instruments I have never even seen before. Clarinets playing with their bells high in the air each time the Introitus music returned. Aleatoric elements that I can't even begin to describe, having not seen the score for myself.
  
• Antiphony. If you're unfamiliar with the term, antiphony is when a piece of music has a spatial component. In the case of Circus Maximus, a sax quartet with a string bass, a clarinet, three percussionists, two horns, and eleven trumpets were scattered around the hall. The first movement, Introitus, opens with trumpet fanfares blasting across the hall from each of the antiphonal trumpets. The third movement, Channel Surfing, consists of music sounding from around the hall in increasingly short, quick spurts.
• Contrast. It constantly shifts from extreme to extreme, from the softest pianissimo of clarinets and low reeds to the volume of the most passionate Mahler times ten. The sixth movement and climax of the piece, simply called Circus Maximus, is a chaos of sound from all angles, which builds increasingly tense as a small marching band parades through the hall. The crescendo builds to the absolute loudest chord you will ever hear, played (as far as I could tell) simultaneously by every single performer in the hall and sustained for a good 30 seconds before dying down. The seventh movement, Prayer, creates about the biggest imaginable contrast with what precedes it: simple, sustained melodies over sustained IV-I cadences. Softly the fanfares begin playing beneath the Prayer music and eventually the opening fanfares return in a flurry of sound in the final movement, Veritas. The piece concludes with trumpets blaring a note in unison for a few seconds, while one percussionist raises a shotgun into the air, the audience knows what is coming next. The trumpets drop a whole step and the work ends with the roar of a gunshot. How can any piece of music even come close to this? There are no more extremes to create, no further upper limits to breach.