As the World Waits (Band Gr. 3.5)

As the World Waits is a response to 2020 that serves as a call to action to help one another overcome adversity in the darkest of times. Through developing a single motif from beginning to end, this piece will make performers and audiences alike experience patience, frustration, hope, and resolution.

Genre: Band | # of Players: Standard
Series: The Emerald Series
Level: 3.5 | Duration: 5:15

Instrumentation
Piccolo (optional)
Flute 1
Flute 2
Oboe
Bassoon
B-flat Clarinet 1
B-flat Clarinet 2
B-flat Clarinet 3
Bass Clarinet
Alto Saxophone 1
Alto Saxophone 2
Tenor Saxophone
Baritone Saxophone

B-flat Trumpet 1
B-flat Trumpet 2
B-flat Trumpet 3
F Horn 1
F Horn 2
Trombone 1
Trombone 2
Bass Trombone
Euphonium
Baritone T.C.
Tuba

Piano (optional)

Timpani (4 drums)
Percussion 1: Glockenspiel Chimes [shared]
Percussion 2: Crotales, Xylophone
Percussion 3: Vibraphone, Suspended Cymbal
Percussion 4 (optional): Marimba [4.3-octave]
Percussion 5 (optional): Snare Drum, Crotales
Percussion 6 (optional): 3 Concert Toms, Chimes [shared]
Percussion 7: Tambourine, Crash Cymbals, Triangle
Percussion 8: Bass Drum, Tam-Tam

Program Notes
As the World Waits is a response to 2020. Not only does it depict my own experience in this significant year, but it also serves as a call to action to help one another overcome adversity in the darkest of times. Musically speaking, there is one developing motive throughout the piece, and it is treated differently in every section. The listener requires patience to listen to the same theme over and over, but it represents the patience required to simply keep going when it feels like there’s no hope left. I didn’t write this piece to depict the anguish of our collective experience. Instead, I wrote this piece to call on all of us to carry the weight of the world when others can’t.

The opening of the piece features music being played in and out of tempo to signify how days may feel the same while time inevitably marches forward. In the second section of the piece, restlessness turns into frustration. When we help others, as I have musically painted in the piece’s twenty-second golden section (a musically significant point just after halfway through the piece), we feel the weight of the world come off our shoulders. This section, marked as “Hopeful, longing,” is a glimmer of the hope to juxtapose the previous just over three minutes of unease, and it is what I hear when imagining the weight of the world coming off of my shoulders. The following sections show the listener what it takes to get to that same hopeful moment and establish it as the norm once more. The dualities of frustration and hope become intertwined to the end of the piece with the final chord marking the triumph of hope.