Music that goes bang…
Inspired by a discussion on orchestral innovations that go wrong
There is a piece of music, popular in parts of the Disc, that celebrates a long-ago Quirmian invasion of Far Überwald. The Quirmian general insisted on a long leisured lunch first, so as to be able to invade with a civilised full stomach an a sense of all being well with the world as, ma foi, we Quirmians are most assuredly not barbarians. The lunch was in fact so leisured and Quirmian that the attack did not take place until shortly after ten past six in the evening. Votchua Doinov's musical celebration of the war did not get off to an auspicious start, as at the premiere performance in Blondograd, there was a miscalculation involving the mighty siege engines used to give an extra percussive noise at the climax of the performance. Thirty members of the audience were crushed to death because the percussionist, a former artilleryman, didn't get the message about "do not load them!" A later performance in Ankh-Morpork, under the direction of Mr B.S. Johnson, saw Johnson reasoning that Agatean Barking Dogs would be even better than siege engines at the crucial part of the performance and make a more emphatic martial noise.. Their use saw the decimation of the string section, who were sitting directly in front of the percussionists, although the audience largely got off unscathed this time. Damage was also caused to many expensive-to-replace violins, violas and cellos. The conductor said that at least the strings don't have too much to do at this point as most of the burden is carried by the horn sections, who were sitting well away from the percussionists. So in his opinion it could have been worse.