Oct
13
Holst 1, Tombaugh 0
2:38 pm · category: Embracing My Inner Geek
It’s a good thing Gustav Holst died just a couple of years after Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, because otherwise he might have felt a lot of pressure to add a whole other piece to The Planets.
Man, I really need to get a life so I don’t have these sorts of thoughts at 3 a.m.
October 13th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
And if he had written it, what would happen to it now?
October 13th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Oh, great. Thanks, Annika. Now I’ll be up until 4 a.m. wondering about that! ;P
October 14th, 2006 at 4:24 am
I have had the exact same thoughts, as The Planets is one of my favourite classical suites. (Except for the name of the guy who discovered Pluto, because I never knew who did that.)
October 15th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
It had always annoyed me that there was no Pluto in the suites. Actually, that was one of the first things I thought of when I heard the announcement. “Yes! That won’t be annoying me any more!”
October 15th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
I cannot possibly express how pleased I am to learn that I’m not the only one who was bothered by the absence of Pluto in The Planets. I no longer feel alone.
October 20th, 2006 at 1:23 am
I personally think “The Planets” was a somewhat inaccurate name for that piece (although it is one of my favorites). There are countless planets in our universe, so in honor of that ideal, the piece should have been named “Our Solar System (sans Pluto)”. I guess that might have been too long though…hehe. I guess in actuality it is difficult to keep up with all the new discoveries being made each and every day in the realm of astronomy. If Gustav Holst HAD added Pluto…what would he have done when they ADDED Pluto as a legitimate planet and then decided “No…it isn’t a planet”…several times? It is a great piece either way…
Jim
October 20th, 2006 at 1:46 am
I know, Jimmy. I’ve spent far too much time thinking about this. But I have an exciting new obsession now. Did you know there’s an opera about Tesla? Wowzers!
October 20th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Get this! On our walk to the mailbox today, Ben (my four year old for those who don’t know) asked me, “So dad…you want to race”? “Sure”, I said, “but you have to give me a small head start since I have been on this planet a good while longer than you”. Ben stopped and looked at me in that way young kids do and plainly said “Well, do you want to go to a different planet?” I said that certainly I would love to go to a different planet, and then proceeded to ask Ben what planet he would choose to go to if he could leave today. The choice of destination for him was PLUTO…hehe. I asked him why PLUTO and he responded…
“So I can meet the aliens”…lol. It seems we aren’t the only ones thinking about PLUTO these days.
Jim
October 20th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
On a related note concerning the number of planets currently outside our solar system. Thanks goes to Popular Science (Nov, 2006 pg.48):
200th planet spotted!
Planet hunters from the University of California at Berkeley unveiled five new planets orbiting stars 50 to 200 light-years away, bringing the total number of planets outside our solar system to an even 200.
Anyone care to do a remake of The Planets now?
Jim