Poe’s horror stories take musical flight at band’s fall concert

“Nervous … very very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say I am mad?”

Thus, the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” attempts to convince the reader of his sanity while describing in gruesome detail the murder he has committed.

Poe’s classic horror story seems an unlikely inspiration for a musical piece, but it, along with two other tales by the author, was the stimulus for a work commissioned by a member of the Acton Band and created by noted composer/arranger Roger Cichy. 

It will premiere at the band’s Halloween-themed fall concert on October 25. 

Each of the three movements of the piece, titled “POEtic Justice,” interprets the short story it represents, says Cichy, who will be conducting the work. The music relies on “a lot of dissonance and tension” to convey the macabre tone of the tales. 

Rattling chains

Among some of the “non-traditional techniques” used to convey the macabre details of the stories, Cichy says, is discordant saxophone playing to convey the increasing inebriation of a character in “The Cask of Amontillado.” Bricks, a cement trowel, and rattling chains are employed for “the rather morbid scene” at the end of the tale. 

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” one can “actually ‘hear’ the servant murder his master and the incriminating heartbeat under the floorboards,” says Jean Patterson, a longtime French horn musician from Andover, who asked Cichy to create a Poe-related work. 

Patterson’s daughter, Alexandra Mattor, “had formed some musical interpretations of several Poe short stories and wanted me to carry those into a musical composition for the band,” she says. Patterson’s husband, Ethan Mattor, also a French hornist, “came up with the idea.”

Rhode Island-based Cichy composes film scores for the World War II documentaries on PBS. He had an opening for another project, and “it just so happened that this one worked out,” he says of the project. The band has worked with Cichy on previous commissions. 

The third movement is “The Masque of the Red Death,” a tale about a prince who attempts, in vain, to escape a deadly plague by hiding in an abbey. Each movement will include a narrated quote from the text. 

Also on the fall concert program are “Unquiet Spirits” by John Mackey, “Halloween” by Morton Gould, “Dance of the Witches” by John Williams, “Incantation and Dance” by John Barnes Chance, “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” by Johann Sebastian Bach, and “Funeral March of a Marionette” by Charles Gounod. 

Flutist to trumpeter

Among the band members from Acton are Cameron Owen, who plays French horn, and Margaret Eileen Romero. The latter says she is “truly fortunate” to have been invited to join the group, “thanks to the high level of playing and even more to the camaraderie within the trumpet section.”

Romero was a flutist in middle and high school, but as a new undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she wanted to join the college marching band. But there were no flutes in the band, and Romero learned she would need to play the trumpet or the trombone. Her decision was made, she says, when her parents found a trumpet at a garage sale. 

Romero earned master’s and doctoral degrees in trumpet performance and pedagogy at the University of Colorado. She teaches elementary brass in the Arlington school district and gives private trumpet and horn lessons in West Acton. Principal trumpet in the Carlisle Chamber Orchestra and Opera51, she is also a founding member of the Cinque Ottoni Brass Quintet. 

The band, directed by Jim O’Dell, will present its third annual Bandemonium concert for children and families on November 9, followed by its Holiday Pops concert on December 13. 

The Acton Band’s fall concert begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday, October 25, at 51 Walden Performing Arts Center. Admission is free, though a $20 donation at the door is requested. Complimentary light refreshments will be provided at a reception following the concert. For more information, visit concordband.org.