Astarael, The Weeper

Astarael, the Weeper is based on Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series. In his books, necromancers use a set of seven bells with different magical properties to control the dead--and the living. Each of the bells is named for one of the Nine Bright Shiners, greatest of the Free Magic creatures from the Beginning. Seven of them gave up their own existence to form the Charter (a system of magic that describes and orders all things), thus bringing order to Free Magic, Life, and Death and empowering those who protect that order.

Astarael, also known as the Weeper, is the last and most powerful of the bells. Its sound transports anyone who hears it, including the one ringing the bell, into the deepest precincts of the the river of Death. There are precious few who can return from this last precinct of Death, described as a beautiful night sky. Here, the river's tricky and volatile currents are still and peaceful. The souls who are departing the world are forced to stare upwards by the nature of the place itself, pulled upward to join the stars in their eternal shining.

Astarael was first performed by the Conway Wind Symphony at the University of Central Arkansas in 2009.