EXHIBIT B: William Ben, Composer, Dies Aged 85

---

February 12, 2008

---

 

EXHIBIT B:

WILLIAM BEN, COMPOSER, DIES AGED 85

 

---

     Some time between 1:00 and 4:00 am last night, the famed composer William Ben passed away. The exact cause and circumstances surrounding his death have yet to be revealed by either the police or his family.

     Ben started his career playing the sousaphone for various orchestras in the tri-state area. Exactly which orchestras are uncertain as Ben varied in his claims, and records from the period are not good. However, what is known for sure is that after composing numerous smaller pieces for soloists and ensembles, the performance of BEN’S THE MOTH launched him to fame in the summer of 1923. He rapidly became known for his bombastic style and auditory pyrotechnics. “While most composers satisfy themselves with subtleties, with elegant flourishes hidden in the waft and wave of meoldy,” one critic once wrote, “Ben simply bludgeons at the senses until they are forced to bow in submission.”

     Ben’s most famous piece, The Feast, was performed only once. Carnegie Hall, specially modified for the event, was to provide the venue for this ambitious enterprise, and it is rumored that on New York’s Upper East Side tickets were changing hands for sums in excess of $2000.

     One attendee described the sight revealed by the lifting of the curtain as “a visual feast.” A vast water serpent made of bronze and paper-maché encircled the orchestra to the left. A similarly designed bull marched and stomped behind the orchestra to the right. (link to “Sub-Beh.jpg”) Between them both was a wild-haired Ben, a man not previously known for his skills as a conductor.

     All reports indicate that the first twenty minutes of the performance were some of the most sonically impressive ever experienced. Ben’s typical grandiosity flowed from the opposing orchestras, the audience pinned between call and response, competing melodies, and great culminations of sound. Ben was elemental between his two ensembles. He whirled back and forth, his baton a blur in his hands. One critic ventured so far as to claim that Ben was the soloist of the performance.

     At the twenty-minute mark, however, recollections of the performance begin to differ, and the story itself becomes harder to trace. Accounts generally agree that elements of discord began to appear. The two strands of the music, which had both traveled the same journey so far, began to diverge. Perhaps it was a change in the time signature, perhaps a key change—again records and critics disagree. Ben himself remained close-lipped as did his surviving performers. However it was achieved, an element of unease was introduced.

     As this discordant element began to grow, the two great creatures behind the performers began to sway. Whether by mechanical design or by accident (perhaps an acoustical fluke) still provides fertile ground for a number of lawsuits. Ben appears to have grown wilder still, and there are stories of him running around the stage shouting, tearing his clothes off, even assaulting one player.

     Yet still the music grew, the two orchestras battling each other fiercely, playing utterly different melodies, each trying to drown the other out in a fury of percussion and brass.

     At approximately thirty-five minutes, 716 bars into The Feast, it is said that the score for both orchestras went blank. Even bar markers were abandoned. This, at least, is the claim of cellist, Hans Akain, but he, like many others, remembers little after this point. In Akain’s words, “we had been instructed to play as fiercely as we could, to remain honest to the themes in the music beforehand, but to improvise upon them. Mr. Ben told us we had to beat the other orchestra into submission with our music. It was exciting, it was utterly unlike everything that had come before. There was something primal to it. It is hard to describe.”

     Whatever Ben’s ambitious plan actually was, it failed to come to fruition. Through conflicting reports and recollections, it becomes apparent that discord spread into each orchestra itself, individuals no longer working together, so that no “auditory victory” could be achieved.

     The anarchy was compounded when Ben (this is one clear image from the disaster agreed upon by most) disappeared from the stage only to reappear moments later, eating a sandwich, his baton no longer in evidence.

     The two giant sculptures must have been swinging wildly at this point, for both broke free of their moorings and descended. Their disintegration was violent, unseating many performers and killing several. The audience, many of them already on their feet, began to flee.

     The chaos was such though that this seemingly simple feat was not easily achieved. It seems some sections of each orchestra were still playing valiantly on, and somehow the damaged acoustics of the building led to many audience members becoming disoriented. Unable to find an exit (though they were clearly marked) distressed audience members turned to violence.

     When the police arrived, Ben had left the scene. In total, fifteen members of the orchestra were dead, and forty-three members of the audience. Many more were hospitalized. In perhaps one of the most controversial statements of a lifetime filled with controversial statements, Ben proclaimed the performance a complete success.

     He enjoyed less success after this performance, though he garnered several memorial prizes in recent years. A self-confessed polygamist, he is survived by an unknown number of wives and children.

 

—BACK—

 

---