Ars omnia vincit, after all.

[Chuck(G)]

Has it escaped anyone's notice that now that Pluto is no longer considered to be a planet that Mr. Holst's ditty is now scientifically complete?

[tofu]

Thanks Chuck for pointing this out. Perhaps Holst knew Pluto wouldn't hold up as a Planet!

Pluto was discovered in 1930 and Holst died in 1934. Although he wrote the planets in 1914-1916 I wonder if he considered adding Pluto?

[Mark]

Has it escaped anyone's notice that now that Pluto is no longer considered to be a planet that Mr. Holst's ditty is now scientifically complete?

There are versions of The Planets (musical) floating around that have added Pluto through another composer. They must be embarrassed. Unless, of course, it is a very short movement -- Pluto is now officially a dwarf planet.

[Kevin Hendrick]

still no Earth though.

Well, in comparison with even the smallest of the four "giant gasbags", Earth is a dwarf planet too (also Venus, Mars, and definitely Mercury)!

[SplatterTone]

But who really knows what planets and inhabitants might be lurking in all that dark matter around us? Timothy Leary, maybe?

[windshieldbug]

Has it escaped anyone's notice that now that Pluto is no longer considered to be a planet that Mr. Holst's ditty is now

again

scientifically complete?

Perhaps Gustav know better than all of us...

[windshieldbug]

Richard Dyer, Classical Notes. "Composer Lee completes a space odyssey."
Boston Globe, July 8, 2005

When Gustav Holst composed his most popular work, ''The Planets," from 1914 to 1916, Pluto had not yet been discovered. Pluto swam into Clyde Tombaugh's telescope in 1930, but Holst displayed no interest in composing an additional movement for his suite.

As part of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra's fifth anniversary celebration this summer, founder/conductor Charles Ansbacher decided to commission a ''Pluto" movement from Cambridge composer Thomas Oboe Lee. The premiere performances are on a program with Holst's ''Planets," tonight and tomorrow night at 8 at the Parkman Bandstand on the Boston Common (free).

Lee remembers his first conversation with Ansbacher. ''He came to hear the Civic Symphony of Boston play the premiere of my 'Utopia Parkway' this season, and liked it. He told me, 'You are the right person to write 'Pluto.' I thought at first he was talking about Walt Disney's Pluto, but when I understood what he wanted, I thought this would be fun to do."

Lee is not the first person to write an addendum to Holst's suite. In 2000, the British composer Colin Matthews wrote ''Pluto, the Renewer," which has been widely performed in England and recorded. Former Boston composer Julian Wachner tried his hand at it in 2003 for the New Haven Symphony, adding movements for the recently discovered ''Planet X" and an epilogue, ''The Sun." There are also works by Brad Spitz and New Zealand's Gareth Farr, who must be a free spirit, because his publisher's website describes him as ''composer, percussionist . . . and drag queen."

Lee's eight-minute movement is called ''Pluto, Lord of the Underworld." The composer says it begins with a fanfare, ''followed by the sounds of the three-headed beast Cerberus growling at people who want to get into the underworld. Then there's a waltz, inspired by Liszt's 'Mephisto Waltz,' and soon Pluto is deliriously dancing." A quiet passage follows as Persephone appears, ''and then the fanfare from the opening comes back to end the piece with a big bang."
Lee says he listened to Holst's piece many times, and there are ideas or techniques that connect ''Pluto" to it, but ''I also wanted to write a kind of music Holst did not use, and to make my movement different. Holst doesn't have a waltz, so I made one, in a texture different from his, to complement and add to what he did."

[Chuck(G)]

Okay, I've heard of women with the first name of "Viola" and there are plenty of people with the surname "Horn" but there's actually a human being alive with the middle name of <b>Oboe</b>?

Wonder if his older brother's called "Bassoon"?

[windshieldbug]

Thomas Oboe Lee, composer

Born: September 5, 1945, Beijing, China
Home: 9 Remington Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Education: B.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1972
M.M., New England Conservatory of Music, 1976
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1981
Career: Faculty member of the Music Department at Boston College since 1990

[ai698]

I always thought Pluto was a dog and was owned by a mouse.

[Chuck(G)]

Thomas Oboe Lee, composer

Born: September 5, 1945, Beijing, China
Home: 9 Remington Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Education: B.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1972
M.M., New England Conservatory of Music, 1976
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1981
Career: Faculty member of the Music Department at Boston College since 1990

...and he's giving away CD's for a George Balanchine quote...

[Chuck(G)]

ABC reported there are 3 other celestial bodies that might qualify as planets. What then? Dig up Gustav?

Sure, grab some DNA and build a composer....

[windshieldbug]

76 celestial bodies hit the big parade,
with 101 asteroids right behind,
there were rows and rows
of comet tails in tow...

[Brassdad]

ABC reported there are 3 other celestial bodies that might qualify as planets. What then? Dig up Gustav?

Sure, grab some DNA and build a composer....

I'd recommend against that, as by now he's a De-Composer.

[tofu]

76 celestial bodies hit the big parade,
with 101 asteroids right behind,
there were rows and rows
of comet tails in tow...

"Then I modestly took my place as the one and only bass,
and I oompahed up and down the square."

so would the One and Only Tuba Player still get to take his place

And how big a BAT are you going to need to balance 76 Trombones and 110 Cornets?