A dear friend has pointed out that a) most high school bands lack a string section, which makes playing classical music difficult, b) most high school bands sound terrible, and c) any music teacher with a shred of passion left would not want to subject their favourite pieces of music to the butchering of 100 lazy and mostly untalented students.

I will not dispute such wholly universal facts! I was in band for six years, and I know what the teachers were up against. I did think, as I was writing my post, that having no string section made playing some classical music difficult, and that the apathy and lack of skill of many of the players also makes any attempt at something remotely complicated an exercise in futility. I suppose I kept thinking back to high school, where we had pieces in our music folders, with interesting names like Kilimanjaro and Lux Aeterna, that we only rarely pulled out at our teacher's request. We always butchered them, but to this day I wish that the teacher had just pushed us through, made us practice, so I would have some idea what those pieces sound like. Instead, my fingers probably still remember the fingerings for Sleigh Ride and Under the Sea, given the chance to play again. *sigh* I guess I should head down to the CPO more often to get my fix live. ;)