Astronomy… and a little bit of astrology

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you.

And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme. And for this one it is… Astronomy… Music that takes its inspiration from humanity’s gaze out into the cosmos and from our attempts to reach beyond this fragile planet we call home. Now this theme yielded a bunch of music… but quite a bit of it, I would say, perhaps a little unfairly, sounded like the soundtrack to very average science fiction films. So to widen the scope, and also to access some music that predated the quite modern science of ‘astronomy’ I’ve thrown in some works that may owe rather more to ‘astrology’ or perhaps even to the realm of ‘mythology’.

This has been a fabulous excuse to discover some new music, new to me anyway, and embrace some old favourites. And perhaps come up with the most eclectic collection of music yet put out into the world under the ‘Classical For Everyone’ banner. In the next hour and a quarter you are going to hear music by Gustav Holst, Jean-Phillipe Rameau, Henri Dutilleux, Joaquin Rodrigo, Terry Riley, Johann Sebastain Bach, Brett Dean and Benjamin Britten.

Of all the music that might spring to mind when thinking of Astronomy, the English composer Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite ‘The Planets’ from 1918 is probably the leading contender. Each of the seven sections carry the name of one of the planets of our solar system and so far that all seems pretty astronomical. But then he added descriptions for each one, some of which reference the ancient associations of the planets with pagan gods… so that the full title of the section I'm going to play you, for example, is… ‘Mars, Bringer of War’. And it turns out the Holst was something of an enthusiast for astrology… describing casting horoscopes for his friends as his ‘pet vice’. But although astrology was Holst's perhaps starting point… in the words of his biographer Michael Short:

 “He arranged the planets to suit his own plan… ignoring some important astrological factors such as the influence of the sun and the moon, and attributing certain non-astrological qualities to each planet. Nor is the order of sections the same as that of the planets' orbits round the sun; his only criterion being that of maximum musical effectiveness.”

 And his ‘astrology influenced’ title descriptions for some of the planets were, perhaps from the perspective of a century later, a bit silly… Saturn is the ‘bringer of old age’ and Jupiter is the ‘bringer of jollity’. Incidentally, as the entire suite was premiered in 1918 there has been an idea that ‘Mars, bringer of War’, which is indeed very warlike, was in some way a comment on the carnage of World War One. But it was the first section Holst wrote and was completed in mid 1914 which was still a part of what some people have called ‘the long Edwardian golden summer’. A time during which a four year-long world war was unimaginable.

Ok. Time for some music. So this is the opening section of Gustav Holst’s ‘The Planets’… as I have said… called ‘Mars, The Bringer of War’. It is about seven minutes long and is performed here by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

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That was the opening section of Gustav Holst’s ‘The Planets’ called ‘Mars, The Bringer of War’ and it was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

So, I mentioned at the beginning of this ‘astronomy’ themed show there might be some astrology and even some mythology. And the Holst I just played you had a bit of that but the next two pieces deliver both. The two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini are named Castor & Pollux. The idea of a constellation made up of twins goes back to the Babylonians but it was the ancient Greeks who named the two brightest stars after heroes whose fidelity and honour were rewarded by Zeus, the king of the gods, with, instead of regular deaths, being placed in the night sky.

In France in the 1730s the composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau and the poet Pierre-Joseph Bernard took the myth of Castor and Pollux and turned it into an opera. I’m going to play you two short excerpts. This is some gorgeous music. First up is the chorus of Spartans singing by the grave of Castor who has been killed in battle. The song is ‘Que tout gemisse’ and in English the words of the song are… “Let everything mourn, Let everything unite: Let us prepare, let us raise eternal Monuments To the most unfortunate of Lovers: May our love and his name never perish; Let everything unite, Let everything mourn” It is about three and a half minutes long. Here are Les Arts Florissants directed by William Christie with ‘Que tout gemisse’ from the opera ‘Castor & Pollux’ by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Pierre-Joseph Bernard.

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That was Les Arts Florissants directed by William Christie with ‘Que tout gemisse’ from the opera ‘Castor & Pollux’ by Jean Philippe Rameau and Pierre-Joseph Bernard. A little later in the opera the character Télaïre, who as far as I can tell was created by the poet and composer for the opera, who was in love with Castor... and who is, to keep it a little mythological, the daughter of the Sun… sings a beautiful lament by Castor’s grave. The title of the song from its first line is ‘Tristes apprêts, pâles flambeaux.’

In English the lyrics are I think quite moving…

Mournful apparitions, pale flames, Day more frightening than darkness, Dismal stars within tombs, No, I shall no longer see anything other than your funereal beams. You who see my heart dismayed, Father of the day, O Sun! O my Father! I no longer wish a blessing that Castor has lost, And I renounce your light.

Here is Agnès Mellon singing Télaïre’s song ‘Tristes apprêts, pâles flambeaux’ from Jean-Phillipe Rameau and Pierre-Joseph Bernard’s opera ‘Castor and Pollux’. It is about six minutes long and again William Christie directs the group Les Arts Florissants.

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That was Agnès Mellon singing Télaïre’s song ‘Tristes apprêts, pâles flambeaux’ (and I promise no more French this episode) from Jean-Phillipe Rameau and Pierre-Joseph Bernard’s opera ‘Castor and Pollux’. William Christie directed the group Les Arts Florissants.

Ok for pretty much the rest of the show we are leaving mythology and astrology behind. But before I move on I just want to think my friend Simon Jemison who a week back brought my attention to an article about astrology in the New York Times… pointing out that as the earth’s polar orientation has drifted over the millennia our annual relationship with the ‘signs of the zodiac’ has drifted as well. To give a simple example, the constellation called Taurus isn’t behind the sun from April 20 to May 20 any more. Most of those days of the year Aires is in that position. So all those Taureans out there are not Taureans. Now a little disappointingly the NY Times article seemed to miss the opportunity to say something pointed like… ‘so every time you read a tabloid prediction or shelled out money for a horoscope it was not only pseudoscience, it was fabulously wrong pseudoscience.’. Perhaps they were just respecting a diversity of opinions. And maybe this ex-Taurean should do the same.

In 1978 the French composer Henre Dutilleux, whose surname is spelt D U T I L L E U X, composed a piece for orchestra he called ‘Sounds, Space, Movement’. And he added the subtitle ‘The Starry Night’ as he was partially inspired by the Van Gogh painting but he took the idea further and used music to describe alternatively the stillness of vast amounts of space and the swirling energies of spinning star clusters. This is the four minute middle section primarily for cellos performed by the National Orchestra of Lille conducted by Darrel Ang. ‘Sounds, Space, Movement’ by Henri Dutilleux,

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That was the middle section of ‘Sounds, Space, Movement’ by Henri Dutilleux performed by the National Orchestra of Lille conducted by Darrel Ang.

A couple of quick bits of information for you. On the individual episode pages of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ website, that is classicalforeveryone.net there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes including this one. And in case you are curious about what is coming up on the podcast, I want to let you know that the next episode of Classical For Everyone will focus on the incredible pianist Glenn Gould. Back to music inspired by and/or connected to Astronomy.

We’re staying with European composers but now bringing in American space exploration. In what I hope you will agree is an oddly moving story.The Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo is today best known for his guitar concerto, the ‘Concerto of Aranjuez’. In 1970 he and his wife were in the US for a premiere of another of his works in Los Angeles and afterwards travelled to Texas to visit friends. Whilst in Houston they toured the Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Johnson Space Center, where the Apollo astronauts had been trained and also the location of Mission Control. During the tour, Rodrigo was able to hold rocks that had been brought back from the moon… a privilege even rare for any VIP… but the composer had been blind since the age of three… so to hold these objects from another world… was his way of seeing them. Some years later when the Houston Symphony asked Rodrigo to compose something for the 1976 American Bicentennial it is safe to assume that his encounter with those rocks may have influenced him. He wrote a symphonic poem he called , A la busca de más allá, or “In search of the beyond.” In his program notes for the Houston premiere, Rodrigo noted that the work had “no definite story or descriptive content but was meant to evoke in the listener the sense of mystery associated with the far-off, ‘the beyond.’”  

Here is the Castile & Leon Symphony Orchestra conducted by Max Darman Brogado with ‘In Search Of The Beyond’… A la busca de más allá  by Joaquin Rodrigo. It is about 16 minutes long.

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That was the Castile & Leon Symphony Orchestra conducted by Max Darman Brogado with ‘In Search Of The Beyond’ by Joaquin Rodrigo.

I hope you are enjoying this ‘astronomy-themed’ episode of Classical For Everyone… Next is something from the 21^st century that blends some remarkable science and some extraordinary music. But it needs a bit of a preamble.

The American physicist Don Gurnett died about three years ago. His specialist area was measuring plasma waves.. Now plasma, without getting too bogged down, is super-heated gas, and makes up a huge proportion of the universe. It is everywhere and Plasma Waves are electromagnetic disturbances that travel through that plasma medium - like ripples moving through water, except these are electromagnetic ripples moving through the plasma "ocean" of space. In the same way that seismologists study earthquake waves to understand what is happening under out feet, Don Gurnett and his colleagues studied plasma waves to understand what is happening in the universe… to put it another way… plasma waves are the "language" that space environments use to communicate their properties to us - they're our way of reading the invisible electromagnetic conversations happening throughout the cosmos. Now the place to gather information about plasma waves is out in space and to do this you attach complicated devices to spacecraft and send them out into the beyond.  What on earth does any of this have to do with music? I’m getting there I promise. In a moment you are going to hear the plasma waves… well, not the waves themselves… the captured plasma wave data turned into sound. Now turning the data into sound serves a serious scientific purpose… it is an incredibly good way to analyse phenomena.. to find patterns… to detect anomalies… far better than just looking at screens. The process works like this: electromagnetic signals are captured by the spacecraft's instruments, transmitted back to Earth, and then converted into sound in Don Gurnett's laboratory. Working with NASA, Gurnett used various spacecraft including the two Voyagers, Galileo, and Cassini to capture those signals.

So… in the year 2000 someone at NASA or a group of people at NASA got their hands on some money to commission people to make works of art to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the launch of the Voyager spacecraft. Amongst the people and groups they approached was the Kronos Quartet. David Harrington from the group then met with Don Gurnett in his lab and listened to a selection of the 40 years of recordings Gurnett had made. The Kronos Quartet then commissioned the composer Terry Riley to write music for them that would include excerpts from this collection of what I think can quite genuinely be called ‘music of the spheres’. Riley called the composition ‘Sun Rings’. The whole work is about an hour long and is amazing. But I’m going to play you just one section. After a quietly strange beginning it really becomes quite beautiful. It is called ‘Earth / Jupiter Kiss’. Here is the Kronos Quartet and the sounds of plasma waves translated into terrestrial audio by Don Gurnett. It is about six minutes long. ‘Earth / Jupiter Kiss’ from Terry Riley’s ‘Sun Rings’

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That was ‘Earth / Jupiter Kiss’ from Terry Riley’s ‘Sun Rings’ with the Kronos Quartet and the late Don Gurnett’s sounds of plasma waves from space translated into terrestrial audio.

A couple of times today I’ve mentioned the two Voyager spacecraft. As the next piece quite intimately involves them I’m going to take a minute to give you a little background. The two probes, each weighing about 800 kilos, were launched in 1977 and their mission objectives were principally to collect information on the planets Saturn and Jupiter. Then if all went well, to head on to Neptune and Uranus. To say they have outperformed expectations is an understatement… forty eight years on, they are still receiving instructions from earth and sending information back… despite the fact that they left the solar system over a decade ago. They are now each over 20 billion kilometres from earth and moving away from us at a speed, just to mix units of measurement, of about 40,000 miles an hour.

And they are taking some music with them. For those of us old enough to remember LPs and for those of you young enough to have discovered vinyl… you might take heart to know that attached to the side of each spacecraft is a copper and nickel LP coated in gold… deliberately intended as both a message and a time capsule sent to any intelligent life out in the universe. NASA gave the Carl Sagan, Linda Salzman and Frank Drake the job of selecting the contents of the record. Amongst images and greetings in multiple languages there is about 90 minutes of our planet’s music… including a couple of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach. And in a moment I’ll play you one of those Bach pieces but first I just want to moderate any excitement about when any distant civilization will get our message… it will be another 18,000 years before Voyager 1 arrives at the next solar system. So if you’re at all worried about this message in a bottle prompting a spate of alien abductions… it’s going to be a while before anyone comes for our loved ones.

But in the context of the strange collection of music for this episode I just love the fact that the three minute third section of J S Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 is hurtling through interstellar space looking for beings with a record player lying around. Here is a recording of Itzhak Perlman playing the piece.

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That was the third section of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 performed by Itzhak Perlman

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. I have another couple of pieces coming up but before I get to them I want to give you a little information that I hope you find useful… On the individual episode pages of the podcast’s website, classicalforeveryone.net there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes including this one. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

Alright, to finish this ‘astronomy’ episode I have something I played in an episode featuring living composers about four months ago. But once I tell you about it I hope you will agree that it needed to be included. This is a slightly darker work than most of the ones in the show and is a reminder that our tentative steps out into the cosmos can come at enormous cost. Commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 2007, the piece is ‘Komarov’s Fall’ by the composer Brett Dean. And here is what he wrote about it from his publisher’s website…

“My work is written in memory of Soviet Cosmonaut, Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov, who died upon re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere in his Soyuz I spacecraft in 1967.

As I began work on this commission, the initial sonic inspiration came via the eerie, lonely beauty to be found in recordings of space telemetry signals, but chancing upon a vivid archival recording of Komarov’s frantic discussions with the control centre from on board his craft further informed the dramatic urgency of the work.”

Here is Hugh Wolf conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Brett Dean’s haunting and powerful ‘Komarov’s Fall’. It is about eight minutes long.   

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That was Hugh Wolf conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Brett Dean’s ‘Komarov’s Fall’.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’. This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a final few minutes of music that touches on the stars. This is the song ‘Now the Great Bear and Pleiades’ from the 1945 opera ‘Peter Grimes’ by Benjamin Britten with words by Montagu Slater. The character Peter Grimes in a rare moment of stillness and introspection looks up at the constellations in the night sky and sings…

Now the great Bear and Pleiades
where earth moves
Are drawing up the clouds
of human grief
Breathing solemnity in the deep night.
Who can decipher
In storm or starlight
The written character of a friendly fate -
As the sky turns, the world for us to change?
But if the horoscope's bewildering
Like a flashing turmoil of a shoal of herring,
Who can turn skies back and begin again?  

Here is the singer Jon Vickers with Colin Davis conducting the Royal Opera House Covent Garden Orchestra. ‘Now the Great Bear and Pleiades’ from ‘Peter Grimes’ by Benjamin Britten and Montagu Slater.

Thanks again for listening.

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