A composition about an unfortunate day. For concert band.

• Dies Irae (Full Score).pdf: The full score, for the director.
• Dies Irae (Parts).pdf: Sheet music for individual instruments.
• Dies Irae (Import).mid: A MIDI file suitable for importing into a musical notation program.
• Dies Irae (Performance).mid: A MIDI file suitable for playback.
• Dies Irae.wav: WAV audio of the performance MIDI.
• Dies Irae.xml: The score in MusicXML format.

The song is meant to evoke a day in the life of an unnamed protagonist, using some unorthodox methods and playing styles, in the vein of Daniel Bukvich's Dinosaurs.

The events represented in the song are as follows:

• 0:00: Morning. The protagonist sleeps.
• 0:20: The protagonist's alarm clock beeps.
• 0:23: The alarm clock is hit, and the protagonist falls out of bed.
• 0:27: The protagonist stands and stretches.
• 0:34: The protagonist begins the day, following the usual routine.
• 0:48: The protagonist's car won't start, but then it does.
• 0:56: The protagonist begins driving.
• 1:01: The turn signal is activated.
• 1:08: It begins raining. Windshield wipers are running.
• 1:25: The protagonist nears a railroad crossing and hears the bell and the train whistle, but tries to make it across the tracks anyway.
• 1:51: The train puts on its (squealing) breaks.
• 2:03: Car/train crash.
• 2:07: Ambulances on the way. Horns honking, alarms ringing.
• 2:23: A heart monitor is hooked up to the protagonist.
• 2:30: Paramedics working on our protagonist, but the heartbeat becomes irregular.
• 2:45: Cardiac resuscitation attempts. The heart monitor flatlines.
• 3:09: Dirge.
• 3:22: The heart monitor suddenly begins beeping again, erratically and then regularly.
• 3:34: Oh happy day, the protagonist is not dead.

I wrote this song in 1998 when I was 14. I only recently found the original sheet music and re-entered it into a digital format so that I could share it online, changing very few aspects of the original. The original inspiration for writing the song came from my father when he remarked on the rhythmic properties of our cars windshield wipers and said they'd make a good beat for a song.

This song has never been played publicly and was only attempted privately once, by the George S. Parker High School Symphonic Band in Janesville, Wisconsin at the end of my sophomore year in high school. If you play it with real instruments, I would love to hear how it goes: [email protected].

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Basically, you are free to do with it what you want as long as you give credit to the original author (me, Christopher Finke).