Concert Band

Magga from The Four Noble Truths

Grade 3 | 5 Mins

The Four Noble Truths was commissioned by the Dutch National Brass Band Championships for their 2003 competition.

The Four Noble Truths are the most basic expression of the teaching of Buddha and therefore still form the guidelines for Buddhists to this day. They concern themselves with Dukkha, which has no exact translation but can mean suffering, stress or sadness etc.

Dukkha – The Noble Truth of Dukkha

The First Noble Truth describes the different types of stress we all experience – birth, aging, desire, change and death all bring us different type of stress.

Samudaya – The Noble Truth of the Origins of Dukkha

The Second Noble Truth describes those parts of our lives that induce stress – feeling, craving, desire, ignorance and a wish to achieve short-term rather than long-term pleasure are all self-inflicted origins of stress.

Nirodha – The Noble Truth of the Cessation of Dukkha

The Third Noble Truth tells us how we can eliminate stress from our lives by eliminating those aspects of our lives which induce stress.

Magga – The Noble Truth of the Path Leading to the Cessation of Dukkha

The Fourth Noble Truth gives us a description of eight disciplines which can help us eliminate the origins of stress from our lives.

It can be seen from these over-simplified definitions, that the Four Noble Truths fall into two pairs, the first two describing the origins of stress and the second two describing how was can reduce stress. To reflect this, the four movements of this work are also combined into two pairs – two quick movements and two slow movements.