By the time I found out about the Marion Community Band, I had not officially played for more years than I had. But, thanks to all those early years of practicing, I was able to wobble my way back on the bicycle for Ye Moƒt Noble and Eƒteemed Woodwind.*
That led to being in the “small but mighty” Rockwell Collins (now Collins Aerospace) Band, which mostly plays for company employees and nursing homes but is basically my only non-road-trip activity.
This year (in today’s concert), the band has an extra challenge — the “Hallelujah Chorus”. You know the music. I love the music. Mr. Shay challenged the high school chorus to do it when I was a freshman. I can sing both the soprano and bass lines cold.
The band version does not follow the vocals at ALL. The high winds act more as strings and bells. There are only 32 notes in the whole thing below middle B, where the finger-register divide is. It has notes I never learned until this summer, when I got shown up by a Linn-Mar student who later made All-State. It is one of the most challenging pieces I have ever played, or more accurately attempted.
However, “Hallelujah Chorus” does not rise to the annual exhaustion that is “Sleigh Ride.” (If a trivia question ever starts along the lines “written during a heat wave” this song is likely the answer.) It has a section in A major (three sharps), the line never stops moving, the notes soar way into the beyond-high-C stratosphere, and THERE ARE E SHARPS IN HERE.
I will die, but I will die valiantly.