Friday, July 16, 2004
I've been watching the first night of The Proms on the BBC. It's a habit I only got into last year and it's not like it's on my 'must not miss' list, "Oh, no more heroin for me please Mr Reed, I have to go home and listen to The Proms!" but if I'm in and it's on I like to have a listen. Part of today's performance was of Holst's The Planets which I've had a deep affinity with for years. We've all heard Mars, The Bringer of War but I like all the pieces. It's ironic that, whereas so much music is about the emotional effect, Holst marries emotion and science, using the Roman names of the planets, the names that they have in science, but keeping all their roles, such as Mercury, the Winger Messenger.
And as a godless agnostic/atheist I always have the strongest reaction to the final piece in the suite, Neptune, The Mystic. If there were a Heaven then I would like to think that Neptune is the sound someone hears as they ascend, soft music, choirs on the edge of hearing, entering into the arena of something we cannot comprehend. The BBC kept flashing up pictures of the relvent planets through the performance but that was missing the point. This work isn't about the planets out there, or just about the planets out there, it's about the planets in the human head and heart. In us are contained universes, galaxies of planets. Holst has given us a map of a few of them.
I'm also looking forward to catching what I can of the performances of the work of Dmitry Shostakovich. I heard and loved his Leningrad symphony several years ago, written during the Second World War it was an overt attack on the fascism of Germany while covertly warning his countrymen of the similar danger they faced at home from Stalinism, so I'll do my best to be around to hear more of his work.
And as a godless agnostic/atheist I always have the strongest reaction to the final piece in the suite, Neptune, The Mystic. If there were a Heaven then I would like to think that Neptune is the sound someone hears as they ascend, soft music, choirs on the edge of hearing, entering into the arena of something we cannot comprehend. The BBC kept flashing up pictures of the relvent planets through the performance but that was missing the point. This work isn't about the planets out there, or just about the planets out there, it's about the planets in the human head and heart. In us are contained universes, galaxies of planets. Holst has given us a map of a few of them.
I'm also looking forward to catching what I can of the performances of the work of Dmitry Shostakovich. I heard and loved his Leningrad symphony several years ago, written during the Second World War it was an overt attack on the fascism of Germany while covertly warning his countrymen of the similar danger they faced at home from Stalinism, so I'll do my best to be around to hear more of his work.
