The recent astronomical event over New England had birds a-twitter, pets scrambling, windows shaking, and the rest of us wondering, what exactly was that big boom?? The American Meteorological Society and NASA cleared things up in short order: a meteor casually cruising by (at around 75,000 miles per hour, no big deal) before breaking up over Cape Cod Bay in an explosion equivalent to around 300 tons of TNT. Boom indeed!
This got me thinking: there’s a lot of amazing space-adjacent classical music. Let’s voyage amongst the stars together!
Composers in Space
Plenty of celestial bodies have been christened after composers. Amongst the asteroids alone, we have 1034 Mozartia, 1059 Mussorgskia, 8249 Gershwin, and many, many more. A lesser-known composer with his own space rock is Francesco Maria Veracini (Asteroid 10875 Veracini). In the 18th Century, he divided his working life between Venice, Dresden, and London, played a mean violin, and was alternatingly considered madly talented... or just plain mad. Have a listen to his dramatic Overture in G while reading facts about his asteroid:
- Located between Mars and Jupiter, therefore a “Main-belt Asteroid”
- Circles the sun every four-and-a-half years or so
- Considered “non-hazardous” by NASA, as it’s pretty far from Earth
- Approximately the size of the island of Manhattan
Eyes on the Heavens
William Herschel (1738-1822) is best known today for his astronomical brilliance. He discovered the planet Uranus (plus a few moons), developed high-powered telescopes, pioneered the concept of peering into deep-space just to see what's there, and more — all as a second career! He started as a multi-instrumentalist and composer, writing quite a few pieces before expanding his view beyond earthly horizons: over 20 symphonies, a dozen concerti, and more than 130 pieces for the organ, to name a few of his musical feats. Hear the opening to his 17th Symphony while contemplating the stellar world beyond our own:
“To the makers of music – all worlds, all times”
So reads the inscription scratched onto the Voyager Golden Record, a remarkable recording mounted to the outside of NASA’s twin spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Launched in 1977, both of the little-probes-that-could are still alive and traveling outbound at over 50,000 miles per hour. They're now billions of miles from Earth, and have entered interstellar space. Talk about living up to a name!
Composer Dario Marianelli found inspiration in the contents of those golden records for his "Voyager" Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, saying, “...the chances of [them] being found are infinitesimal but still, it is a message in a bottle.” That message? Greetings in over 50 languages, sounds of the Earth (from heartbeats and thunder to modern motor vehicles), and 30 pieces of music from around the world. One of those was the Gavotte en Rondeau from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major, giving Marianelli “the voice of the Voyager.” Composed at the request of Marianelli’s long-time soundtrack violinist Jack Liebeck, the piece has yet to be officially recorded. Fortunately for us, Marianelli posted a complete performance from April of 2015 on his SoundCloud account. Listen to the original Voyager Golden Record recording first, with violinist Arthur Grumiaux. Then, experience Marianelli’s infinite journey with violinist Jack Liebeck, joined by Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Orchestra.
(Movie) Stars in Space
Our visions of this galaxy and what lies beyond are often influenced by visions on the silver screen, brought to life most effectively when paired with a great soundtrack. Here are few that highlight the humanity of stepping beyond our world.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) has a classic soundtrack - literally! Hits from the orchestral world pepper director Stanley Kubrick’s vision of the future. Here’s a pair of pieces by a pair of (unrelated) Strausses: Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss and The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss, Jr.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is one of John Williams’s many stellar soundtracks. He’d already proven how much he could do with just two notes (Jaws, anyone?), but given five, anything is possible, including communications with higher life forms. Check out the five notes in action before watching Williams conduct a full suite from the movie.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) – the original, mind! – with an iconic soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann. Remembered for his suspenseful collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, North by Northwest, Vertigo, etc.), Herrmann’s unusual instrument choices here would influence years of alien soundscapes to come. Included in the studio orchestra were two theremins, two pianos, and two harps; a bunch of brass and percussion (including three vibraphones); electric violin, cello, and bass; two Hammond organs, and the cherry on top: a Wurlitzer.
Now that the organ is in the picture, we have to let it loose. No better way than via Hans Zimmer’s score to Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014). Nolan wanted Zimmer to enter the project with no pre-conceived notions, not telling him anything about the story or even the genre until a theme emerged. Then it became a matter of instrumentation, and the organ was it.
Zimmer: “There’s something very human about it because it can only make a sound with air, and it needs to breathe, and on each note you hear the breath. You hear the exhale.”
Nolan: “You feel human presence in every sound, and I think that was very important to keeping the film about not just the space that we’re looking at but the people in that space.”
That space provided the backdrop for the director’s vision of humanity in space.
Nolan: “We really wanted to use the church organ, and I also made the case very strongly for some feeling of religiosity to it, even though the film isn’t religious, but that the organ, the architecture of cathedrals and all the rest, they represent mankind’s attempt to portray the mystical or the metaphysical. What’s beyond us, beyond the realm of the every day.”
Project Hail Mary (2026) was easily one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the last couple of years. Based on a beloved book of the same name by Andy Weir, the adaptation to film was amaze amaze amaze (If you know, you know)! Composer Daniel Pemberton nailed the soundtrack, balancing the alien and the human, with a dash of humor and some wild percussion to boot.
BONUS! Holst’s The Planets
Would it be a classical music article about space without a mention of this collection of celestial bodies? Probably not! Check out Susanna Mälkki leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the 2015 Proms at Royal Albert Hall in a performance that’s outta this world!
