The Planets in popular culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

The Planets Suite by English composer Gustav Holst has found many uses in popular music and in film and television, particularly the movements Mars and Jupiter.

Contents

[edit] Film

  • In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, John Williams seems to have based much of his score on Mars. These similarities are most evident in the action sequences, such as the Battle of Yavin. In fact, the bit of music that is played imminently before the Death Star's explosion is almost identical to the ending of Mars. In addition, in Williams' music to the first Harry Potter film, an ostinato used in the "Chess Game" scene is heavily related to "Mars" in its instrumentation, 5/4 time and use of triplets.
  • Selected pieces from "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy of scores by Howard Shore, sound heavily influenced by The Planets.
  • Similarly, the entire scoring for "Trinity and Beyond" (the documentary about nuclear bombs) also borrows heavily from The Planets.
  • A trailer for X2: X-Men United (2003) starts with a segment from Neptune (studio logo and the scene where Xavier and Magneto play chess) and then transitions to Mars for the rest of the trailer.
  • A version of Jupiter was used in the 2004 film Mr. 3000.

[edit] Television

  • Mars was used heavily in episode five of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, entitled "Blues for a Red Planet", which examined the fact and fiction of the planet Mars.
  • Mars is played, and sung by henchmen #21 & #24, in Season 2 episode 2 of The Venture Bros
  • Mars, Venus and Jupiter were arranged by Jay Bocook into a common marching show
  • In the musical score for the 2000 film Gladiator, composer Hans Zimmer quoted Mars in several scenes using several themes in his score, including the relentless hammering motif heard throughout the piece.
  • "Jupiter" was used to promote the television series "Planet Earth", featuring David Attenborough, in Australia.
  • In Quebec, a French-language 2005 TV commercial for Pepsi used a high-pitched version of Jupiter's ballad in a patriotic context.
  • The opening of The Venture Bros. episode "Hate Floats" features Henchmen 21 and 24 singing Mars in anticipation of returning to active duty as professional henchmen.
  • A British Airways commercial from the early 2000s featuring P. J. O'Rourke used Jupiter's ballad while he described amusing oddities about the British people.
  • The BBC dramatic series To Play the King features a fictional British monarch starring in a television documentary bemoaning the growing harshness of the British social and economic system. The fictional documentary ends with the young king standing on a seaside moor while the soundtrack plays the hymnlike Thaxted passage from Jupiter.

[edit] Radio Specials

[edit] Music based off or inspired by The Planets

  • The Cream hit "White Room" begins with a four-chord intro in 5/4 time - essentially Mars being played in reverse - before the beginning of the first verse.
  • Japanese singer Ayaka Hirahara made her debut with her single named Jupiter on December 17, 2003, and the title track was based on the theme of Jupiter from Holst's piece. The single release of Jupiter was one of the best-selling singles on the Japanese market in 2004.
  • The Frank Zappa song "Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin" begins with a rendition of Jupiter.
  • In the Symphony X song "The Divine Wings of Tragedy", Mars is quoted after the choir intro.
  • King Crimson's "The Devil’s Triangle", the longest track on their album In the Wake of Poseidon, is basically a renamed version of Mars: Bringer of War. The band would have called the piece "Mars", as they had when they performed it on tour in the 1969 lineup, but were forbidden by the composer's legal estate.
  • The introduction to "Eyes of the World" on the Down To Earth album by British rock band Rainbow refers heavily to Mars.
  • The Overkill song "Who Tends the Fire" begins with a rendition of Mars, which is repeated throughout.
  • Japanese electronic music pioneer Isao Tomita adapted The Planets on his 1976 album of the same name.
  • Mars theme Laibach uses in songs Mars, Panorama and Nato.
  • The 1967 song "Listen to the sky" by the rock band Sands features an electric guitar rendition of "Mars" as an outro.
  • In the musical West Side Story the main melody of the song Tonight is almost exactly the same as a small verse from Mars.

[edit] Video games

  • The Playstation Game "Return Fire" features the Mars theme.
  • In the Xbox and PC game, Fable, part of the music in the beginning Guild sounds remarkably similar to part of Venus, perhaps even directly out of it.
  • Mars is used in the video game Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES. It can be heard in the Airship stages, as well as the tank and battleship stages of World 8.
  • Mars features heavily as background music for Outpost, the computer game.
  • In the third installment of the Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind, the main theme bears a striking, almost exact, resemblance to the middle stanza of Jupiter.

[edit] Misc

  • Mars is used in the Bedlam series of games from Ground Zero Software.

[edit] Literature

[edit] Real world events

  • "I Vow to Thee, My Country", the hymn set to the tune Thaxted based on the central section of Jupiter, was the basis for "The World in Union", the official anthem of 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. The hymn was sung at the wedding of Diana, Princess of Wales at her request, and also sung at her funeral.
  • Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating entered the Australian Labor Party's 1993 Policy Launch to the music.

[edit] References

This article does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since December 2006.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/h/e/The_Planets_in_popular_culture_3fa3.html"