An Orchestrated Attack

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Our history teacher didn't talk about the Gulf War. She didn't even pull down a map of the world and point to the Middle East. Then again, I suppose she had bigger problems to worry about-some kids in the class couldn't locate Illinois on a map.

Neither do I remember talking about the war with my friends, unless it was to ask whether we'd seen the latest awesome press conference footage-General Schwarzkopf standing in front of a television monitor narrating the flight of a bomb as it entered the chimney of a building or the window of a munitions depot.

I thought about the war the most when I was at band practice. That fall, the band director passed out the sheet music for Symphony No. 1 (In Memoriam, Dresden, 1945), a piece by Daniel Bukvich dedicated to the firebombing and subsequent obliteration of the German city of Dresden. One look at the part in front of me and I could tell that this was unlike anything I'd played before. The parts were written aleatorically, meaning that, instead of notes on the staff creating a melody and countermelody, there were diagrams and instructions telling us to play our instruments in unorthodox ways to represent the bombing of the city. The trombones were to drone on a low B-flat to mimic the rumble of bombers approaching the city. The trumpets sounded the wailing air-raid sirens. Next the score instructed the entire band to frantically whisper the word firestorm over and over in German, to capture the panicked gossip that spread through the city as the first wave of bombers dropped jellied gasoline in order to prepare the way for the incendiary bombs that would ignite the city.

The trombone drone of the bombers continued as the flute began mimicking the sound of bombs whistling toward the earth. The percussion section commanded a battery of drums to conjure up the bomb blasts and shook thunder out of a sheet of metal. As Dresden burned, we blew air through our horns to create the violent winds, brought on by the rapidly rising heat, that sucked victims into the burning rubble of buildings and blew over structures weakened by the initial blasts. When it was all done, roughly 30,000 civilians had been killed, many buried alive in basement bomb shelters and then burned beyond recognition by the great fire that raged for weeks to come. After playing the piece, I always felt emotionally drained and distant, as though I had experienced something traumatic, felt the presence of a darker reality.

I approached the director and asked him if I could find some images that could be projected on a screen above the band while we played. This idea wouldn't have come to me without the live war footage I took in every night on CNN. I was not a technologically savvy kid. But hearing this music, I saw images.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print