My friend Liam has written a minimalist piece about the planets. Really quite nice and relaxing.
Pythagoras, Christian philosophers and even modern musicians have been fascinated by Musica Universalis (Music of the Spheres). But the music of the spheres is not "music" as we understand the term today. Rather it refers to the harmony, phases, and relationships between the planetary bodies; their sizes, their speeds, their resonances. As the planets move across the heavens they fall in and out of sync with one another creating an infinitely complex, non-repeating pattern of harmonies.
This piece explores these ideas through music. The Earth cycles through its seasons, marking each with a digitally altered piano. Mars announces it’s movement around it’s 687 day orbit with a manipulated trumpet tone beginning at each extreme of it’s orbit. Saturn sparks new patterns of improvised percussion as it travels across the sky in an arc lasting nearly 30 years. Other patterns manifest themselves for the listener to uncover as the piece progresses.
