Holst's Planets Suite - and More

[NatBalance]

Beyond the Planets Suite for electronics and orchestra

prelude: Sentinel (should played almost inaudibly before conductor enters, fading up as audience settles...)
1) Big Bang - The Universe expands.....
interlude: Sentinel
2) Voyager - Beyond Pluto
interlude: Sentinel
3) Discovery - The Infinite and Beyond
4) The Universe Contracts
postlude: the Sentinel remains: everything has changed, nothing has changed....
(should still be just audible through bows, applause, and as audience leave the hall...)

Sounds interesting Jayne but what is it? Is it a piece that exists, one you are composing, or a suggestion as a separate suite to The Planets suite? I like the Sentinel idea, a piece that continues throughout, even as the audience leaves. Brilliant.

[cloughie]

Sounds interesting Jayne but what is it? Is it a piece that exists, one you are composing, or a suggestion as a separate suite to The Planets suite? I like the Sentinel idea, a piece that continues throughout, even as the audience leaves. Brilliant.

Perhaps commissioning one of the forum’s composers?

[LMcD]

Perhaps commissioning one of the forum’s composers?

If this goes ahead, will Arthur C Clarke receive a credit for the idea of the Sentinel?

[Richard Barrett]

I always feel the same about the fifth movement Berio later added to the four of his 1968 Sinfonia, and for similar reasons. Actually, come to think of it, the harmonies Berio deploys in that original fourth movement finale have a strangely (in both senses) Holstian quality to them.

I have to disagree here - the third movement is so overwhelming that the much shorter fourth hardly makes any impact at all as an ending, whereas the fifth in the complete version not only creates a more balanced overall structure but also acts as a kind of recapitulatory element as if all five movements constituted a single form.

Anyway, if Pluto is to be included in some hypothetical extended Planets (which as I've said goes in any case against Holst's concept which is astrological rather than astronomical) thn you'd also have to include the Kuiper belt object Eris, which is almost as large as Pluto and significantly more massive. Probably there are a few other "dwarf planets" out there still awaiting discovery.

[ahinton]

I have to disagree here - the third movement is so overwhelming that the much shorter fourth hardly makes any impact at all as an ending, whereas the fifth in the complete version not only creates a more balanced overall structure but also acts as a kind of recapitulatory element as if all five movements constituted a single form.

Anyway, if Pluto is to be included in some hypothetical extended Planets (which as I've said goes in any case against Holst's concept which is astrological rather than astronomical) thn you'd also have to include the Kuiper belt object Eris, which is almost as large as Pluto and significantly more massive. Probably there are a few other "dwarf planets" out there still awaiting discovery.

Who might you see as possible candidates to be asked to do this?...