Whirl (2011)

“Whirl” is the result of a fun collaborative project with my wife’s 6th grade beginning band in Morton, Illinois. As part of her beginning band curriculum, she does a small unit on composition where all the kids write a short 8 bar melody. These melodies only use the notes that they had learned so far on their instruments. Additionally, the melody had to start and end on concert Eb and be in concert Eb major. All of the melodies written were narrowed down to a handful of high school band helpers, and then voted on by the rest of the 6th grade band. The winner was a melody with the title “Witz Whirl” by Luke Witzig. The students then got to see how this melody was turned into a concert band piece that they would then play at contest later that year. Compositional terms such as repetition, fragmentation, and augmentation could then be shown to the 6th graders in a new piece for young band written just for them.