The Tell-Tale Heart for Flex Band

As a child, I was an avid reader, and among the stories and books I enjoyed were horror and thrillers - or at least the adaptations for kids. Among one such collection of short stories was a version of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, and I really fell in love with it. Years later, as I began my career as a music educator, I found myself working and living in Baltimore, Maryland - Edgar Allan Poe’s home. As such, his stories were a local treasure and often the topic of English Literature units in the schools. This brought his stories back to my attention, and now in the “big kid” versions. The main motif in Poe’s story of The Tell-Tale Heart is, of course, the heart beating from under the floorboards, reminding the narrator of that which he has done. In musical terms, this motif translates ever-so-perfectly into the percussion section, where (in this work), the concert bass drum becomes the absolute central character to the programmatic story. This piece unfolds much in the same way as Poe’s