Cirelli 1

Marcello Cirelli

Concert Music After 1945

[Course Number]

5/3/19

Concert Essay

I went to see the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble perform John Corigliano’s

Symphony No. 3, Circus Maximus. They also performed Sousa’s Circus Galop, Fucik’s Entry of the

Gladiators, and Stravinsky/Ruskin’s Circus Polka, but for the sake of this essay I will only be

discussing the Corigliano symphony. The concert was conducted by professor Vimbayi Kaziboni,

a Zimbabwean-American conductor.

The opening to this piece is absolutely amazing and bombastic. I love how there are

circus music elements in an extremely dense context. It sounds like a ‘horror’ circus. The

instrumentation in the beginning is really fascinating in that the winds almost resemble strings

at some points. The second movement is very eerie with very dissonant saxophones, in addition

to pizz. bass. It goes straight into the third movement which is clearly meant to be funny with

its sudden breaks. There are some jazzy horn moments interspersed between. There’s

definitely some Bernstein influence in this piece. The third movement ends with a giant D chord

which channels the first movement’s motif, and then it kind of “crumbles”.

The fourth movement is very quiet with flutes and clarinets playing tightly written

chords over a low drone which seemed to be mallets on the piano which I found really cool.

Some of the sounds created are reminiscent of circus animals: for example, the trombone very

much sounded like it was mimicking the sound of an elephant at one point during this
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movement. This piece has surround instruments and while I couldn’t see them, the effect they

were creating was really interesting. I love classical mixed for surround speaker systems, but

this took it to the next level. Movement four was also very magical with random bells and

glockenspiels sounding like twinkling. Movement five was funny with a hi hat swing appearing

every now and then. Very film-score like, especially with the giant unexpected fortissimo! It

then accelerated into a very percussive section with toms and timpani.

Movement six began like a siren and then quickly reprised the theme from movement

one. Now there was a marching band walking around the audience! A little over-the-top but it

fits the music. All of the sudden this mass of sound from the main orchestra was just amazing. I

was not a big fan of the movement that followed, while it was very pretty it felt a bit out of

place. The structures were very cool however as the harmony was modal, but the melody

would be a half step out of place. The surrounding trumpets as well were very interesting. Once

the final movement came there was more of a return to form, followed by a shotgun blast to

end the piece.

I was not expecting to enjoy this piece so much but this was by far one of the best

concerts I’ve ever been to.