The 2013 Drum Corps International Open Class World Championships in Michigan City, Indiana saw Vanguard Cadets surpass Blue Devils B by a quarter of a point in Prelims and 0.45 points in Finals, this after having lost to the Devils’ “Warped” production all 11 times the two corps had competed together prior to the final week of the season.
While Blue Devils B captured the caption award for best percussion for the fifth year in a row, Vanguard Cadets won all remaining caption awards including general effect, brass, and color guard.
Genesis received the award for Most Improved Open Class Corps after placing third with “mOZaic,” a unique take on the “Wizard of Oz” story. Down the road in Indianapolis, a then-record five Open Class corps made it past their World Class counterparts in the Prelims to advance to the Semifinals, including the three corps listed above, plus Spartans and Music City.
2013 Vanguard Cadets
Vanguard Cadets’ “The Art of War” called its troops to action with a show that was a tribute to celebrating the undying human spirit, a life essence that can survive anything thrown at it and still move forward to contribute to others and all of society.
For eons, people have gone to war to serve their king and/or their country, then returned home to once again become productive for the greater good. Although there were some battlefield scenes, the show generally expressed the emotions of the sacrifice of soldiers. The show was given the same name as the ancient book by Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu that was written 25 centuries ago.
At the start of the performance a lone trumpet plaintively played a brief melodic segment from Aaron Copland’s “The Promise of Living” while a single drum occasionally beat out strokes from a battle cadence. After the entire horn line saluted in unison, the show started in earnest with the drums, set in a parade block, spreading out to advance into battle.
The brass players, scattered across the sidelines of the field, closed in amidst the shattered dusty brown flags of destruction. The corps’ drum shells and color guard costumes featured bright red accents, as if reflecting blood that is so often spilled in battles. The color guard costuming also included stripes down one arm that hinted at military epaulets.
Corps arranger Key Poulan provided the original ominous opener, titled, “Unto the Breach,” serving as the first musical selection in Act 1 of the production. Parts of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” were worked into the Poulan piece, presented as a call to action to bring together the troops, emotionally setting up the members for battle. Poulan’s original work returned to finish off Act 1.
Dario Marianelli’s “Elegy for Dunkirk” from his Academy Award-winning score for the 2007 movie, “Atonement,” provided the basis for Vanguard’s “Act 2: In Stillness.” The corps treated this segment of the show as the calm before the storm of battle, when soldiers reflected on what they were missing back home while fearing the battle to come.
2013 Vanguard Cadets
The corps performed much of the piece to the backfield, and even when the horns turned forward as a mass of purple-hued flags filled the field, the music remained rather restrained. A subdued climactic build was followed by a decrease in intensity, leading into a trumpet soloist flanked by four percussionists forming the iconic Vanguard “V” with their cymbals. In this case, the “V” could also represent the symbol for victory, which those heading into battle were hoping would come their way.
A 5/4 time signature treatment of Mussourgsky’s “Hut of Baba Yaga” provided the music for the corps’ “Act 3: Summon the Blood,” a most unusual treatment of the famous movement from his 1874 10-movement suite for solo piano, “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
This was the movement where the corps actually did refer to an actual battle and the death, destruction, and agony that war brings. The entire color guard section spun rifles militaristically and projected anguished poses. The flag spinners then picked up large white flags smeared with red, as if they were giant bandages used to wrap the battlefield wounded. The sound of a falling bomb was followed by a recorded reverberation of the bomb exploding.
A short rendition of Samuel Barber’s elegiac “Adagio for Strings” from 1938 provided the first half of “Act 4: The Quality of Mercy,” the section Vanguard’s show that represented warriors returning home to their normal lives after having to do awful things in battle to survive.
The recovery from the horrors of war began with Aaron Copland’s “The Promise of Living” from his 1958 suite extracted from “The Tender Land,” based on the composer’s earlier full-length opera. Originally telling the story of a Depression-era family in the heart of America’s Breadbasket, corps designers utilized the piece to convey a sense of hope of recovery, with red flags streaked with purple and yellow reflecting the commencement of healing from the bloodshed.
A stationary company front concluded the show with a sense of hope for the future, and certainly hope filled with the potential that mankind might learn that war is a futile exercise that leaves behind pain and suffering that can never be erased by the promises of the future.
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Michael Boo was a member of the Cavaliers from 1975-1977. He has written about the drum corps activity for more than 35 years and serves as a staff writer for various Drum Corps International projects. Boo has written for numerous other publications and has published an honors-winning book on the history of figure skating. As an accomplished composer, Boo holds a bachelor's degree in music education and a master's degree in music theory and composition. He resides in Chesterton, Indiana.