The Sounds of Literature!

The Southland Wind Ensemble is happy to present our first concert of 2026 titled, The Sounds of Literature! The music in this concert has been inspired by different literary works, starting off with the Russian short story by Nikolai Gogol, Night on Bald Mountain. The original version, composed by Modest Mussorgsky, was reorchestrated by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and its popularity skyrocketed, including an appearance in the 1940s Fantasia. The next literary work is considered one of the great novels in Western Literature, Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605 and 1615. The musical composition, composed by Vincent Safranek, is one of the forgotten works that pays an homage to some of the pillars of the text, depicting Sancho Panza, Dulcinea, Don Quixote and the village where Don Quixote came from. To end the first half of the program, we look at the Magna Carta, a document written and edited from 1215 to 1300 that influenced modern democracy. John Philip Sousa wrote a march that commemorated the International Magna Charta Day.

The second half of the program takes us back to the early 18th century, with an anonymous text, Komm süßer Tod (Come, Sweet Death), that Johann Sebastian Bach set music to and contributed to Georg Christian Schemelli’s Musicalisches Gesang-Buch. Bach’s setting of Come, Sweet Death is one of his most popular settings since his use of harmony and melody expresses the desire for death and heaven. Finally, the wind ensemble helps tell the story of Peter and the Wolf, composed originally for orchestra by Sergei Prokofiev. The work functions two-fold, first, the ensemble introduces some of the instruments as characters in this story and two, the narrator sets the scene and drives the story as the ensemble brings the story to life.