Here we
present several diverse genres of space inspired
music as well as natural
sounds that actually originate in space.
New Age &
Electronic Space Music
We begin with electronic
space music. Electronic music ranges from Space
Age Pop to Progressive Rock and Spacerock
to New Age.
The term Space Music,
in fact, often implies New Age music. This probably
comes from the Hearts
of Space radio program that began playing meditative
music on Berkeley radio in the 1970's and is now syndicated
around the country.
Note that a sub-genre of New Age has developed with
music intended as soundtracks for planetarium presentations.
See, for example, the Loch
Ness Production albums.
We present here a few albums with a strong connection
to actual space exploration and to musician sites and
other resources !
Eleven
by Graham Smith
This project is "A musical tribute to Apollo 11, the
first mission to land a man on the moon". The website
provides samples of the eleven songs, which each depict
a phase of the Apollo 11 journey. The album offers "over
50 mins of melodic electronic instrumental music".
"This ambient melodic electronic album is a musical
journey of Apollo 11 - the first mission to land on
the moon. Graham Smith creates atmospheric soundscapes
with lush retro sounding keyboards reminiscent of
Air, Chicane and Orbital with a little Jarre and Vangelis.
Sit back, relax and enjoy a journey to the moon and
back with over 50 minutes of music."
The 30-year NASA veteran astronaut who flew six Space
Shuttle flights has developed a multimedia presentation
about his life and experiences in space.
Cosmic
Fireflies CD "combines Story's poetry with
music from space luminaries; Harry Roberts, Jonn Serrie,
Brian Eno and Kevin Braheny. Perhaps the best space
music odyssey ever, this one hour journey creates
ambience, imagination and wonder".
"A
Space Story" DVD "is a galactic journey with
Story visiting the Hubble Space Telescope, viewing
Earth from Space, and reaching for the Heavens through
the eyes of Hubble with sounds from space music Luminaries."
Kurt Swinghammer-
Vostok 6 - 2000
Vostok 6 is an "electronic concept album inspired
by Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkov".
Apollo Atmospheres Brian Eno, Daniel
Lanois, & Roger Eno Soundtrack for Al Reinert's
documentary For All
Mankind. On the Brian Eno's album Apollo: Atmospheres
& Soundtracks (1983 Editions EG - ENO 5). Some of
the music can also be found on Eno's Music for Films
III.
Rendezvous
Jean Michael Jarre
This album was dedicated to the Challenger crew. As discussed
above,
Ron McNair was going to play on his saxaphone a piece
written for him by Jarre.
The piece appears on this album with the sax played
by Pierre Gossez: Track 6 - Last Rendez-Vous.
Film score includes extracts from "Orchestral
Tubular Bells", "Orchestral Hergest Ridge",
"Ommadawn", "Incantations" and "Portsmouth".
Music written by Mike Oldfield except "Portsmouth"
which is traditional. Directed by Tony Palmer
A film first televised in 1979 and later edited
on vhs in 1983. "The Space Movie" contains footage
specially made avaliable by NASA and The U.S.
National Archive of the lunar landscape to commemorate
the 10th anniversary of the first man landing
on the moon.
The soundtrack was supposed to be released
as an album, including the otherwise unreleased
"Orchestral Hergest Ridge", but it never was.
Vangelis has created a number of works inspired by
space themes. For example, he did the soundtrack for
the famous Cosmos documentary series created and hosted
by the astronomer Carl Sagan.
Recently, he released his Mythodea composition that
was dedicated to the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission that
is now orbiting the red planet. Audio
clips
A concert of the music was performed on June28, 2001in
a Greek temple in Athens and included sopranos Kathleen
Battle and Jessye Norman, the London Metropolitan Orchestra,
the 120-member chorus of the National Opera of Greece
and twenty-eight percussionists.
A 1996 compilation of Vangelis's space inspired compositions
such as Albedo 0.39 and Cosmos.
Vangelis also did an electronic version of his soundtrack
for Blade Runner, which takes place on earth
but had characters and background stories involved with
space travel.
Immersion
Theory
Ambient "space music" from John-Mark Austin.
The first release, "The Icarus Foray is
a transcendent auditory journey through the universe
and into the heavens."
"...Throughout four tracks Austin contemplates
the grandeur of the cosmos and mankind's attempts
at communion with it. With airy synth pads, deep sweeping
tones and reverberant waves of electronic harmonies
each composition builds a delicate atmosphere. Combining
this with astronaut voices, ethereal choirs, rumbling
spaceship effects and a dynamic musical range extending
from the sustaining quietude of space to exultant
orchestral crescendos gives us an album equally at
home in the planetarium as it is on a remote hillside
gazing at stars."
MURCOF Fernando Corona is a "Mexican electronica artist
and soundscaper" who has produced music for planetariums.
Fiorella
Terenzi
An astrophysicist, a science popularizer, and a musician,
Dr. Fiorella Terenzi has created several works that
use sounds derived from celestial radio signals:
Digital
Moonscapes by Wendy
Carlos Wendy
Carlos, of Switched-On Bach fame and composer of
soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange, The Shining,
and Tron, was inspired by the Voyager missions
to create a suite of musical portraits of the major
moons of the solar system.
Emulating a fully symphony orchestra with her GDS and
Synergy Digital Synthesizers (this was before samplers),
she performs two suites on the album:
Cosmological Impressions
with three movements: Genesis, Eden and .I.C ("Intergalactic
Communications").
The Moonscapes, in the spirit of Holst's Planets,
begins with an impression of Luna and then works outward
to the moons of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
LifeTron
Evolution of the Sun
Mike Milillo and Henry Tarnecky are music composers
"who write music pertaining to the fusion of science
and music." Their most recent work is called "The
Evolution of the Sun"
The work "is a 20-minute musical, narrative depiction
of the scientific processes involved in the birth of
stars, their evolution and inevitable yet variant demise.
Experience a prelude of the big bang and the ultimate
coalescing of hydrogen to helium, the fundamental elements,
which make up our star and all stars in our perceived
universe."
Other projects in development include compositions
celebrating "The Science of Special and General Relativity,"
TimeshipStudio Boris
Belovarski and his wife Victoria are independent
producers of audiovisual programs that mainly invovle
"sci-fi audio theatres (radio drama) and audiobooks,
plus all that comes with it: music soundtracks, special
effects (SFX), foleys, moods, soundcapes, etc."
Space
Walk (1984) - compiliation of previous release
pieces but each re-titled with a space related label.
Dawn
Chorus (1984) - includes radio astronomy audio
recordings.
Carola Kassner
Carola Kassner is a German composer and musican who
has released two albums Planetary Voyage (1994)
and The Space Experience (1999) for Planetarium
shows. The music is intended to "guide the listeners
to the universe and accompany them to fantasy journeys
through time and space."
This ambitious work tells the cosmic story "from
the 'Big Bang' to the end of the 'Ice Age'". It
consists of ten Acts with multiple Scenes. The CD comes
with " a twenty-page booklet that describes each
Act and each individual Scene."
"A contemporary soundtrack music that blends both
acoustic and electronic instruments along with scene
ambience and sound effects to create a delightfully
Classical, New Age, and Jazz musical journey through
time."
"Clinton S. Clark is an award-winning composer
and studio musician with experience in motion picture
scoring and music for planetariums (Voyager
and Where Time Began). "Piano
on the Net," another award winning project
by Clint, and has been featured on the NBC Nightly News
and on CNN."
Siddhartha
Barnhoorn
Siddhartha has long been fascinated with space and is
developing two albums inspired by space:
"Space Paranoid is going to be very complicated
because I want to make it into a very evolving album
beginning with symphonic rock and gradually changing
to progressive metal and from that to synth... with
those progressions I'm going to do various style like
jazz and blues... got samples on my site from things
finished."
"The Space Suite is all classical. I
use samples with that and a very deep mysterious reverb.
Also samples on my site."
Samples of his works can be found on his site in the
Music
section.
Furthermore, the composer says the background of the
music (the "objective" like organ sounds) is actually
a conversion of the jpg image to midi sounds using the
MIDImage
software. The melody is his "subjective" contribution
made with Mozart,
the Music Processor™ music notation software.
Flow
Motion British experimental electronic music group
consisting of Edward George and Anna Piva . They pursue
"exploration of different concepts of space and
their translation into music and art. In particular,
the group’s work demonstrates a preoccupation with the
cosmos."
George and Piva have also experienced weightlessness
via a plane in Russia flying parabolas and made recordings
during the flight. More about this in their entry
at spacearts.info.
Contacts
in Space - long list of links to space music performer
sites
The
UK Space Music Page - Richard Perry reviews
electronic music to help you find the quality sounds
amid the din of the mundane. He is a space enthusiast
who also provides links of interest on his site.
Sea
and Sky: Sky Gallery & Music - enjoy
a gallery of pictures from the solar system and the
cosmos with the otion of background new age music.
The Continuum by Tony
Caracciolo -
"It's a frolicking retro-pop symphony where melody,
lyric and musical arrangements flutter over and under
a cool contemporary world-music vibe."
The Rocket Thrower
Big Bang Prarie
Dean
De Benedictis (aka Surface 10)
Dean De Benedictis's music
has ranged from "borderline space rock"
to "Techno, Trip Hop, Ambient"
Salvaging
The Past - "merging of deep space,
abstract ambient, Berlin school, and techno tribal
that incorporates native flute and other sacred
instruments."
Star Chronicles
- a series of audio and visual "journeys" in which
animation artist Charlie Case developed collaborates
with several musical artists including Jonn Serrie.
Holst Planets Suite
is probably the earliest space music ever created and
is still among the most popular. Here we discuss the Planets
and other symphonic and classical style space music.
Planets
by Gustav Holst
Gustave Holst's most popular work, written between 1914
and 1917, was actually inspired by his love of astrology
and classical mythology rather than any astronomical
interest.
With an expressive late-romantic style, each piece
of the suite gives a vivid picture of a planet's mythic
persona. Mars and Venus, for example,
present a vivid contrast between warlike and peaceful
gods.
Holst was a very shy person who seemed overwhelmed
by the attention that Planets brought upon him.
He never wrote anything like it again.
Those HobbySpacers who
claim they never listen to classical,
have nevertheless heard, and probably enjoyed greatly,
music from the Planets, especially the Mars
movement, via soundtracks of innumerable space documentaries
and of films of all kinds.
Pluto, the Renewer
British composer Colin
Matthews wrote this piece in 2000 as an addition
to the Planets Suite. Pluto was unknown when Holst wrote
Planets. Note, however, that Holst was following the
astrological and Greek/Roman mythological planets and
might have left out Pluto even if he had known about
it.
Cosmonaut: A Dance Opera
in Four Orbits By David Chesworth and librettist Tony MacGregor
Cosmonaut is a modern opera by composer David Chesworth
and librettist Tony MacGregor. It was inspired by the
fate of Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who was in
orbit as the USSR fell apart.
"..rich in content and eclectic in instrumental
approach, especially in the daring and unusual use of
pedal steel guitar normally reserved exclusively for
quality country music."
Pluto
by Colin Matthews
When the well respected composer Colin
Matthews was ask to write a companion piece to Holst's
Planets Suite for the planet Pluto (discovered after
the suite was composed but a few years before his death)
he initially demurred. But after thinking about it,
he decided to give it a shot. In the sleeve
notes to Holst:
The Planets, Matthews: Pluto (Amazon commission link)
he writes:
"'Pluto' is dedicated to the memory of Holst's
daughter Imogen, with whom I worked for many years
until her death in 1984, and who I suspect would have
been both amused and dismayed by this venture."
I've not heard the piece yet, here is one view:
"In 'Pluto' Matthews takes as his starting point
the choral fade-out of 'Neptune' and almost as a flash-back
produces a pianissimo world, a mercurial scurrying
of chromatic runs and scales. The long-held very soft
pedal points, evocative orchestral colour, and the
shining effect of harp and celesta, all add to the
almost tangible pictorial effect. Two great outbursts
are suddenly upon us and as quickly vanish, perhaps
a comet suddenly streaking into view, recalling the
impact of Matthew's earlier Suns Dance. Almost before
we realise it the distant vocalising choir floats
into our hearing again, as if it had been there throughout,
and Matthews is back with Holst confronting the infinite."
- Lewis Foreman, sleeve notes to Holst:
The Planets, Matthews: Pluto (Amazon commission link)
Fresh Aire V
by Mannheim Steamroller
Chip Davis and his Mannheim Steamroller group bring
their rock'n'roll classical style to the story of Johannes
Kepler's book, The Dream, from 1609. In this
tall talem the dreamer travels to the moon and back.
With the help of the London Symphony Orchestra and
the Cambridge Singers, the Steamroller tells the tale
in 10 parts that include Lumen, Escape from
the Atmosphere, and Z-Row Gravity.
Winds
of Mars Bach music played by pianist
Roderick Kettlewell
While there was no actual microphone on the Mars Pathfinder,
the sounds in Winds of Mars are based on indirect
measurements (using a device that measured the direction
of winds via the cooling effects on heated sensors)
and some artistic interpretation to produce what is
probably a realistic representation of the actual sounds
on the surface.
(A microphone
was actually on the Mars Polar Lander that crashed on
Mars in Dec. 1999. It would have given a true measurement
of the sound in the very thin Martian atmosphere. Unfortunately,
we will have to wait several years for another lander
to carry such a mic.)
These sounds have been used as a background to Bach
piano music played by Roderick Kettlewell.
Voyage
Into Space by Peter
Nero
Peter Nero, maestro of the Philadelphia Pops Orchestra,
composed this work in commemoration of John Glenn's space
shuttle flight. It was used as wake up music one morning
during the flight.
Shattering
Suns by Stephen
Taylor
The composer Stephen Taylor of Illinois State University
was inspired by astronomy photos of celestial castrophes
such as those caught by the Hubble telescope to compose
a 5 movement work.
2001:
A Space Odyssey -
Soundtrack 2001: Space
Odyssey provided virtually a symphonic musical appreciation
course. It inspired many viewers, including this editor,
who had had no previous interest in classical music
to begin listening to it.
While many films have used classical music to great
affect, no film has so successfully made it a central
character in the film.
It's difficult, for example, to think of the film without
the main theme from the opening of Richard Strauss's
Also Sprach Zarathustra.
The unusual style of the film, especially the long
segements without dialog, brought special attention
to the music, which acted almost as a narrator to the
often baffling action on screen.
The film critic Roger
Ebert goes so far as to say that the movie was really
a silent movie with musical accompaniment.
At the time it was revolutionary to combine serious
classical music with science fiction. I remember shocked
gasps from some in the audience when Johann Strauss's
Blue Danubebegan serenading the transport
ship on its approach to the space station.
Kubrick did, in fact, commission a score for the film
from Alex
North, who had written the score for Kubrick's
Spartacus. However, Kubrick played classical music as
temporary background music during the making of the
film and by the end he liked it so much he decided to
use it instead.
2001:
Space Odyssey by Ramunas
Yaras Inspired by the film, Lithuanian composer Ramunas
Yaras created this truely beautiful work for two female
voices, flute, violin and cello. Consists of three movements.
Lyrics
from the works of Arthur C. Clarke.
Small Steps - Rachel Holstead - inspired
by the SOHO
satellite images of the sun. Premired at a special
concert in Ireland organized by a SOHO project scientist.
Jazz is clearly one of the most innovative and leading-edge
musical genres. Space themes often come up in the titles
of many jazz compositions, although they are typically
use space imagery as little more than light metaphors
such as Sinatra's famous Fly Me to the Moon.
A few jazz musicians, though, such as Jan
Ira Bloom have found great inspiration from
space exploration. Note that also much of the Space
Age Pop music was jazz styled.
Moon
MaidenDuke Ellington
Duke Ellington performed this song, his first vocal,
on television on the day of the Apollo 11 landing on
the moon. Later included on the album The Intimate
Ellington - 1977.
Space
is the Place by Sun Ra Sun
Ra (1914-1993) was probably best described as an
experimental musician (he referred to his band
members as tone scientists) who used space as
the central metaphor for both his music and his philosophy.
His sound ranged from big band to jazz to free-form
while his philosophy ranged from far-out to just plain
cosmically weird. He said he was born on Saturn and
was "here on the planet, you might say, for a mission".
Countdown Time in Outer Space - The Dave
Brubeck Quartet - 1961
Happy Blues for John Glenn - Sam "Lightnin"
Hopkins
Destination Moon (1962) - Dinah Washington,
album Dinah'62
C.J. Houtchens, A Discovery in Jazz, Final
Frontier, Aug. 1988. - about composer and saxophonist
Jane Ira Bloom who was invited by NASA to contribute
to its art program.
Natural space sounds refer to those sounds
obtained from natural physical processes such as the
pops and whistles produced by lightning in the very
low frequency (VLF) radio band. Pulsations of the sun,
galatic radio signals and even Mars wind data can be
presented in audible form. These sounds can have their
own musical nature or can be used to accompany musical
compositions.
