May 16, 2006 - Tuesday
In the continuing search to listen to more than one CD over and over again in the car, I just bought a CD of Gustav Holst's The Planets. A little like Pictures at an Exhibition, The Planets consists of eight short (4-7 minutes) movements, each representing one of the known planets (Pluto had yet to be discovered in Holst's day). Actually, they represent the impressions people apparently had of the planets in the early 20th century and each movement has a name, like "Mars: The Bringer of War" and "Venus: The Bringer of Peace" and so on.

Yet there's another element to The Planets that I thought would almost certainly appeal to Harry and Jeremy. I learned a few months ago about how music is scored for movies, with sound editors building "temp tracks" out of existing music. The idea is solely to anticipate and approximate the general spirit, intensity, and character of what musical feel the movie director would want for each particular scene, thereby giving the composer something to go on. I learned at the same time from people who actually participated in the sound editing for Star Wars that The Planets was used heavily on the "temp track" for the original Star Wars movie before John Williams ever wrote the score. What's more, they said, there are parts of that final score that remain "uncomfortably close" to The Planets.

Of course, when I showed Harry the new CD he didn't want to listen to it, but we did. And he loved it right away. And he loved it in no small part because he could hear the similarities to the Star Wars music he has come to know so well by watching the movies so often.


Comments, Opinions?