The Hindemarathon is Over

 Last night was the Wind Symphony concert for winter quarter. We played a total of three pieces, one of them being the extremely long Hindemith Symphony in B Flat. We received the piece at the beginning of the year and worked on it up until the concert last night. It has been said that this is the pinnacle piece for wind bands, I'm not sure about that, but its pretty damn cool. It had been a long and sometimes grueling process. We heard many of the same metaphors and stories throughout the two quarters of learning it. Stories such as how "scholars" debate whether the Second Movement is actually the Second AND Third movement due the different sections in it.

Like I said before, we've been practicing this piece for a very long time, even spending entire rehearsals on it, known as "Hindemarathons" by saxaphonist John Seaton. Playing this piece sure seemed like a marathon. After the concert was over last night, I still felt the adrenaline of the piece until about ten or fifteen minutes after, when I  was hit by a wall of fatigue. The piece was very exciting and required quite a bit of thinking, it was a great experience to play it.

Its said that Paul Hindemith was a Nazi, being from Germany during that era. A lot of the symbolism used in this piece had something to do with Nazis (except for the part where clarinets were supposed to "tickle" us, I can't picture Hitler tickling anyone...). This symbolism allowed for some very risky things to slip during class, but it happens. I actually did not think of Nazis. The piece actually made me think of Hell and Dante's Inferno. This may have to do with my playing of the game around the time of receiving the symphony. If you can't tell, its a pretty dark piece, but it is also awesome.

So I would like to close with this: It really was an honor to play this piece. Even though sometimes I wanted to stab myself in the throat during rehearsals. In the end, however, the run of the Symphony went pretty well on the concert. I was glad to have the run we did, it could have been better, but it could've been worse too. Sp hopefully we did Hindemith proud!

 Paul Hindemith

"'Pick the cherries. SO MANY CHERRIES!!!"