Opening piece (of his seven-part opus The Planets) consisting of Holst's musical impression of the entire solar system at the time (minus Earth itself), according to the traditional cosmology of each planet's significance and role.
And a piece far too often audible just under the news of the day, ever since it was first set down on paper over 100 years ago.
(BTW, if this piece, and Jupiter remind you of the soundtrack for Star Wars, it's because Lucas used The Planets music as a placeholder, and liked them so much, he asked John Williams to write something in a similar vein, which he subsequently did. For bonus source material, refer to the theme from the old TV series Lost In Space, scored musically at the time for Irwin Allen by a young composer named Johnny Williams, ten years and more ahead of his work on the original Skywalker tale. You can hear the seeds of multiple movie scores for the Star Wars saga in that work as well.)
While I do love Mars, I feel like its overwhelming success (and the fact it is the first of The Planets) means the rest of the songs get less love. Which is a shame, really: it is quite good as a musical suite.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope Mars isn't our immediate future . . . nice choice.
ReplyDeleteThanks for running some classical music. I'm not much of a rock fan, although I confess that I like some disco and Sabaton, but my loves are orchestral and soundtracks(John Barry in particular).
ReplyDeleteI slip a few in, from time to time.
ReplyDeleteI'm a frequent lurker, rarely if ever post. This is my favorite performance of The Planets.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/MgIOBa4vK2E?si=t8IaEwu2HcV6qkUi
Gustav would be happy with that one too.
ReplyDeleteThat unrelenting, implacable 5/4. It should be recognized as science fiction in orchestral form. The music at 3min 0sec could not better describe a speedy flying machine, struck by enemy fire into an unrecoverable roll ending in a fiery crash - something out of WW2 stock footage yet in the future - this piece was written during WW1. Printed news and the rudimentary silent movie cameras of the day could not begin to capture and deliver to an audience the full effects of mechanized warfare. Huge butchers' bills mounted in an unprecedented era when a new invention could play out an arc of fully automatic fire from a fortified pillbox far across an open field devoid of cover, while commanders reading maps applied outmoded Napoleonic strategies and ordered men to simply march ahead to their doom. New, armored vehicles could not be stopped by carbines. Then add invisible poison gas, and the "fog of war," with communications cut and men uncertain of their positions with limited views of unfamiliar terrain. Fleeting cheers of brassy major chords try to inspire exhausted men to martial glory, but these are rapidly drowned by confusion and chaos. The music winds down to a desparate one on one fight, magazines depleted and weapons jammed, there is nothing but for the lone survivor of his broken unit to take on his final enemy with a brick or a naked fist raining single blows to the head. Until. He. Is. Dead. The last chord is not a victory but a collapse in utter despiration.
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