Out of This World Music

 

Some music is out of this world! Or maybe it sounds spacy. Many composers have written about outer space. Here is a sampling, all of which have been composed or arranged for piano.

Gustav Holst’s The Planets is the most obvious example. While it was composed as an orchestral suite with seven movements (one for each planet), piano arrangements for one and two pianos have be written.

Three centuries early, in 1648, Heinrich Schutz wrote a motet based on the Psalm 19, which begins “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

Over a century later, Joseph Haydn used the same Psalms in his 1798 oratorio The Creation. This piece too has been arranged for the piano.

On to the next century. In 1868 Josef Strauss (Johann’s younger brother) wrote the waltz  Music of the Spheres.

Back to the 20^th century. One of Hector Villa-Lobo’s most popular piano compositions is a set of three piano miniatures called “The Three Marys,” which refers to the three stars in the constellation Orion’s belt.

More recently, Bela Bartok (one of Tomoko's favorite composers) created a series of 153 piano pieces called Microkosmos. This six-volume set starts with simple etudes and progresses to advanced technical works. This “little world” of music is its own cosmology.