also, my ear still goes straight for the horns

[swan_tower]

Observation from Friday night's concert of Holst's The Planets:

Two full sets of timpani, with two percussionists to man them simultaneously, is the symphonic equivalent of TOO MUCH ROCK FOR ONE HAND.

Comments

[beccastareyes]

OOoh, I love The Planets -- Cornell and Ithaca College did a concert of those, and a bunch of us put together accompanying video using NASA and HST images. (Well, and Dr. Bell used some nice shots from the IMAX movie about the rovers for the Mars piece, and there were some Russian images of Venus's surface.)

[kendokamel.livejournal.com]

I love The Planets

The Planets

[paulliver.livejournal.com]

The Planets was the first record I ever listened to. I was six or seven and played it until it drove my parents crazy, at which point I switched to Jim Croce and Gorden Lightfoot.

I'm convinced that the composer for "Gladiator" stole his main theme from "Mars." For which I do not blame him.

[(Anonymous)]

Does that make Cage's notorious piano piece 4'33" the equivalent of "rock? what rock?"

And, to prove my own musical geekiness... Back in the dark ages, when Quadrophonic Sound was just being introduced and 8-track tapes were considered the cutting edge of portable music, I encountered that particular piece during a music-theory class. The instructor claimed that the title was random. I objected as follows:

(4x60)+33 = 273
-273C = 0K = absolute zero (ok, dropping the part after the decimal point...)

and I never had to demonstrate that I was a nerd again.

-- Jaws