If you’ve been following my passion blog you may remember that my favorite DCI show of all time is the Cadets performance of Between Angels and Demons. The music in Between Angels and Demons is from Frank Ticheli’s piece for band, Angels in the Architecture. For my high school wind ensemble we got to play Angels in the Architecture, which was a grueling but awesome 15 minute piece. Ticheli got his inspiration for the piece from his travels around the world to different cathedrals by looking at the different gargoyles that are all around these large structures. He was struck by the fact that some were very innocent looking while others very demonic, so he decided to write Angels in the Architecture based off of his observations and how he felt about the world. Ticheli incorporates hymns from all different religions, such as Christianity and Judaism, to make the theme of the work more universal.

The piece portrays the battle between dark and light and good and evil in two reoccurring themes. The alternation of these opposing forces creates a sort of five-part rondo form by starting off with light and then eventually ending with light again. The piece ends in the same fashion as it began with the angel singing the same comforting words, however after during the last word distantly and ominously a final shadow reappears below it all in the form of a dark and dissonant chord played by the bells and low woodwinds. In the Cadet’s performance you don’t get this slow down towards the end or the darkness to reappear but rather just the light and happiness.  This was strategic since ending quietly and with uncertainty isn’t a very good way to go for marching corps because their forte(mind the pun) is loud, controlled, and flashy, which is exactly how the Cadets ended their show. Also, for closers you want to show the judges all that you’ve got and leave them without a doubt in their mind about your ability.

The Cadets used the music from Ticheli’s work to create a show that would please the audience and still portray the battle between good and evil. Most of Ticheli’s original work remains intact in for their show, however they did take out the section drawn from a traditional Hebrew song of peace (“Hevenu Shalom Aleichem”) in the middle because it has a very different sound and feel to it compared to the rest of the piece and would be difficult to incorporate marching elements around( go to 6:38 video above to listen to this section). Even though Angels in the Architecture is an amazing piece of music and the Cadets play it with amazing execution, that is not what allowed them to take first place at DCI world finals, it was their portrayal of this fight between good and evil along with their impeccable marching skills.  The Cadets uniform is typically white pants and shoes with a maroon top and a yellow sash, however for this show half of the corps dressed in all maroon and the other in all white.  This helped immensely with the visual effects because it allowed the audience to visually see that battle happening between good and evil. Furthermore, their emotional investment in the performance can be see on their faces in the close up views provided, because they are so engaged in the performance in makes the audience’s experience that much better and fuller.  The Cadets ended up winning DCI with a record score of 98.350 out of 100.

*My videos used to be links but then I found out how to incorporate them into my post so that is why there is now only one link.

Link for Video #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVW_GQFGQUs

Link for Video # 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANCg3T2FRh0

Picture #1: http://dci271.dci.org/news/view.cfm?news_id=4fd4edc6-2767-4813-bd09-41bc5c37e4e7

Picture #2: http://www.drumcorpsplanet.com