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Astrophotographers and mysterious musical compositions

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Danny Caes avatar
Danny Caes avatar
Well, as you know, I am not an astrophotographer, rather... an amateur astronomer and connoisseur of ear-friendly nocturnal music (read: music which is at its best during the "small hours" of cloudless nights).
Here's a question for astrophotographers and amateur astronomers with fine-tuned musical ears. Several years ago I heard a very impressive and slow composition for ladies' choir, on Flemish Radio 2. It was a composition which I knew from a derived up-tempo version of it, probably played by the big band of Glenn Miller. This mysterious piece of choir-music which my sensitive ears received from that late-evening radio program on Radio 2 (Maneuvers in het Donker, by Flor Berckenbosch) (Manoeuvers in the Dark), was composed by an admirer of the nocturnal starry sky and also of Earth's oceans (he was also some kind of captain or something).
Perhaps, some of you know the name of that composer, and also the name of that mysterious piece composed for ladies' choir. It was not Gustav Holst's Neptune, which was also for ladies' choir, although it had the same kind of nocturnal celestial grandness in it (the visibility of the milky way as a huge bridge in the sky). As I said before, this piece is very much known as a popular up-tempo tune played by a big band (probably Glenn Miller's orchestra).

Speaking of mysterious nocturnal music, there is a piece from the Armenian/American composer Alan Hovhaness which sounds even more mysterious than Gustav Holst's Neptune, and I would like to know the name of it.

Another kind of nocturnal music:
Central Park in the Dark (Charles Ives).

For Flemish and Dutch readers:
Het radioprogramma Maneuvers in het Donker (gepresenteerd door Flor Berckenbosch) was te horen in de jaren 80 op Radio 2 (het vroegere BRT 2), ik meen mij te herinneren gedurende elke maandagavond van 22:00 tot 23:00. Daar kwamen zowat alle soorten elektronische en akoestische muzieksoorten in aan bod, alsook muziek voor koor, zoals het hierboven beschreven stuk muziek. De herinnering i.v.m. de mysterieus klinkende compositie voor vrouwenkoor zal mij altijd bijblijven, en ik zou maar al te graag de naam ervan te weten komen, alsook de naam van de componist. Misschien weet U iets meer daaromtrent? Het was NIET Gustav Holst's Neptune, alhoewel het dezelfde mysterieuze nachtelijke grootsheid in zich had. Van het betreffend stuk bestaat ook een afgeleide vlugge populaire versie voor big band, mogelijks gespeeld door het orkest van Glenn Miller.
Danny Caes avatar
Danny Caes avatar
Pieces of the universe's mysterious grandness are heard in Olivier Messiaen's Psalmodie de l'ubiquité par amour (the third part from his Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine).
Well Written
Christopher Dietz avatar
Christopher Dietz avatar
As a composer and astrophotographer, I wish I could help you find that piece! As a consolation, here’s a short, gentle piece I wrote called The Summer Triangle:
https://on.soundcloud.com/eUvpcULhjydMTYgL6
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Danny Caes avatar
Danny Caes avatar
Interesting! It reminds me certain parts of Dominique Lawalrée's Symphonie de l'espoir and also of Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring Suite. Dominique Lawalrée was a Belgian composer, of which his Symphonie de l'espoir was, I think, his most impressive work (for orchestra). Note: Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring Suite has a very impressive and grand (read: profound) ending (outro). This ending was once heard in a British documentary on BBC-TV about an astronomical observatory somewhere in the U.K. (?) or perhaps in the U.S.A. (?). Anyway, that day I wanted to know more about the composer of this profound music. Somehow I learned about the existence of the Appalachian Spring Suite and its composer: Aaron Copland.
Christopher Dietz avatar
Christopher Dietz avatar
I did know of Lawalree. From what I have found his music is very contemplative. Yes, there certainly is also some of the Copland in this piece of mine. We are raised on it here in our music schools. Thanks for listening, and good luck finding that "lost" piece you heard on the radio. I know the feeling.
Jerry Gerber avatar
Jerry Gerber avatar
Hi Danny,

I am a composer and astrophotographer.  I studied composition with David Ahlstrom, who was Alan Hovhaness's student.   I'm sorry to say, based on your description, that I don't know the choir piece you're referring to.  

Contemplative, mysterious music goes well with images of deep space objects for obvious reasons:  The cosmos is utterly mysterious.  The more we learn about it the more we realize how little we know.   The cosmos is also a source of contemplation, after all, it was the world-wide Bortle 1 skies of ancient times that led us to think about and wonder, and in turn that gave birth to astronomy.

I'd like to share with you my series of astro music videos and some choir works you might enjoy, Deep Space and Creation feature slow adagios...

www.youtube.com/@astromusicvideo

www.jerrygerber.com/hymns.htm


I hope you find that choir piece you're looking for!

Jerry
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Danny Caes avatar
Danny Caes avatar
Terzijde...
(for Flemish and Dutch readers)
Nog een bijkomende herinnering... Het radioprogramma Maneuvers in het Donker, van Flor Berckenbosch (BRT 2), was een voortvloeisel van het programma MUZIEK LUDIEK, ook van Flor Berckenbosch (begin de jaren 80). Dus de hierboven vermelde muziek voor vrouwenkoor, waarvan een soort overbekende afgeleide big-band versie bestaat (waarschijnlijk gespeeld door het orkest van Glenn Miller) zou ik destijds mogelijks gehoord kunnen hebben in Muziek Ludiek i.p.v. Maneuvers in het Donker. Het is alweer te lang geleden, maar ik weet nog goed dat Flor Berckenbosch wat uitleg gaf omtrent de eigenlijke componist van dit stuk, en dat deze componist tevens een astronoom was en alsook iets met de scheepvaart te maken had, en dus vanop de nachtelijke zeeen en oceanen regelmatig naar de sterrenhemel en de melkweg keek en danig onder de indruk daarvan was, en bijgevolg dat stuk voor vrouwenkoor schreef. Als ik aan de naam van deze componist en de naam van betreffend stuk zou geraken, wel, dat zou mijn dag pas echt goed maken! Deze muziek bleef, na het horen ervan (zo'n goeie 40 jaren geleden) steevast verankerd in mijn geheugen!

Danny Caes, Gent, Oost Vlaanderen.
Danny Caes avatar
Danny Caes avatar
To Christopher Dietz (talking about Dominique Lawalrée, and... Erik Satie),

Someone of the, say, established purists of classical music once asked Dominique Lawalrée if his creations were adequate to consider them as musical compositions. Dominique Lawalrée's answer: Ce sont pas des pommes de terre (These are not potatoes).

The same sort of food-related answer came from Erik Satie, when someone of the purists of "exact" music told him, and also the 'difficult' world of classical composers, that his creations had no shape. Erik Satie's answer came as a unique composition: Three pieces in the shape of a pear (Trois morceaux en forme de poire).

Mmmmmm... perhaps there's a deepsky object out there we could call The Pear... or The Potato...
Danny Caes avatar
Danny Caes avatar
To Jerry Gerber,

Thanks Jerry! (YouTube source, site).

Gustav Holst:
- Everything in this world is just one big miracle, or rather, the universe itself is one.

EMI Records Ltd., His Master's Voice, Newly Recorded HOLST - THE PLANETS, Sir Adrian Boult, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Geoffrey Mitchell Choir.
(believe it or not, I still have the L.P. version, with, as cover photograph: Messier 42 - The Great Orion Nebula).

By the way,
The universe's mystery (or rather, the mystery of the outer regions of our solar system)  is also heard in the "quiet" section of the piece ATEM from Tangerine Dream. The first or "chaotic" section is, as I hear it, the creation of the inner regions of the solar system (a veritable bombardment of asteroids and comet nuclei on proto-planets), and suddenly... after a huge explosion... you are ejected outward, toward the utter cold regions of the Oort cloud, to observe the distant sun and its planets in orbit around it. This is VERY obscure music! VERY mysterious! Near the end of this piece, a very peculiar sound is heard, like some sort of locomotive (train). Difficult to describe the sort of mood in this music! (soundscape).

Also interesting to listen to:
Creation du Monde, by Vangelis Papathanassiou, on his album L'apocalypse des animaux (music for the films from Frederic Rossif for French television).

Nocturnal orbital observations of Earth's airglow and aurorae, lightning and artificial lightsources, grand-scale marine bioluminescence, performed from inside the Cupola at the International Space Station, were, say, already translated into music by Klaus Schulze in the piece Heinrich Von Kleist on his album "X" (1978) (the end of it is like watching the reappearance of the bright sun at Earth's curved horizon).

Observations from Apollo astronauts in orbit around the moon, looking down at the moon's Earthlit nocturnal part, are heard in Klaus Schulze's piece Moogetique on his album Body Love - Volume II. Note: Klaus Schulze made this music for films about... eh... human erotic "activities" (...). Anyway, this piece (Moogetique) and especially the sound of the piano with reverb/delay effect in it, is extremely esoteric, there's very much that feeling of some sort of, say, meeting at the moon (the presence of the... well... entities or ghosts of all the astronomers and observers of the moon who are now residents at or near the moon).
Of the same genre as Moogetique: the Hitchcock Suite (also from Klaus Schulze). Not really the most suitable music to throw the stairs against the wall to have a free floor. Read: to enjoy a good bebop dance, but... well... you could always try. Music For Pleasure (MFP, you remember?).
Danny Caes avatar
Danny Caes avatar
WHAT ?!?!
The beginning (intro) and end (outro) of Billy Joel's The Stranger (the whistler and the piano).
- "After Hours" at a public observatory, when all the visitors are gone, and the telescope-operator has the telescope and the dome for his (or her) self, to start some REAL exploration of the nocturnal sky! (man, I still remember the very first time I could do this, back in 1995, with my Uranometria 2000.0 star atlas and a Celestron C-10 in the dome on the roof of the University of Ghent-Belgium) (that night I thought: NOW is the time for REAL deepsky observing!).
Danny Caes avatar
Danny Caes avatar
- Sonanze (Roberto Cacciapaglia).
This was one of the top albums from the radioprogram Muziek uit de Kosmos (Music from the Cosmos) in the Flemish radiostation BRT 2, during the second half of the seventies (every wednesday evening from 22:05 to 23:45).