Winds of Mars

I was talking to someone about this piece today. I can't remember how I came across it (probably typed 'music and astronomy' into google and scanned through the thousands of results) but I remember ordering it off amazon. So I brought it up on itunes, had a listen, and here's what I think:

'Winds of Mars' was created using the music of J.S Bach fused with sounds generated from the mars pathfinder (an unmanned craft launched in 1994 to analyse the Martian geology, climate, atmosphere etc). Now, there was no micrphone on board this craft, so the sounds were put together using data taken from sensors (so it was a realisation of sounds, really). There is a (ridiculously) large section about the creation process of this on http://www.windsofmars.com/ (no longer seems to be available) which goes into detal about the idea and planning of the piece. Apparently Kelvin Miller (the innovator of the work) approached a guy named Ed Stone (astronomer) who had given a lecture on space exploration and outlining the details of the mars pathfinder. Miller writes,

'As he was talking aboutt he winds of Mars, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach came into my mind, and I wondered, "What if?"'

Well, it's at this point of reading this that I thought "What if what?" and "Why did Bach enter your head again?". As I read on I couldn't help feeling that this narrative was written as though they had achieved something absolutley groundbreaking - which in my opinion, they hadn't.

Anyway, I was still intrigued by the technological process involved in this album, and how they turned sensory data into the sounds of wind (because this didn't seem as straightforward as converting radio waves into sound). The pathfinder had been programmed to heat 6 wires, which would cool in relevance to the wind. The time it took the wires to cool was the data that could in turn process the speed of the wind, and their position determined the direction of the wind. The numerical data returned to earth was formatted into an ASCI file, which was later put through a MIDI sequencer which was able to translate the digital wind sample into sounds.

So, we have the sound of Martian wind. But I still didn't understand where Bach came into this. Roderick Kettlewell, the pianist who performed Bach's work on piano for the recording, shared his thoughts about why Bach seemed approriate. Read this (!):

'It was such a funky idea, but the more I thought about it, the more Bach seemed absolutley appropraite for such an interplanetary concept. Bach's works offer a balance between intellectual rigor and just the sheer beauty of melody and harmony, informed by a sort of vigorous rhythmic sense, so everything comes together in a beautiful form, a parallel with the beauty of form you see in the Universe. Beyond that, there's something about Bach's music, an ethereal, almost spiritual element, that takes us beyond ourselves and beyond our Earthbound consciousness, a purity of form that allows us to send our minds across time and space. In the midst of the barrenness, the pictures of Mars reveal a desolate but calming beauty, so Kettlewell selected compositions that he felt projected that. And, as I performed, I sought to capture in the music this ethereal stillness of Mars, the kind of calmness, reflective of the isolation you might feel if you were off on your own exploring this distant planet.'

Sorry for the long quote - but you need to read it in its entirety to understand just why I think this is going overboard. I think, to an extent, they've done something cool in creating a realisation of what the wind on Mars sounds like... but all this overboard reasoning for applying Bach just takes away from the project. Personally I think that a new composition comissioned for this project would have made the final result a lot more appealing. So how about you stop talking about this ethereal interplanetary appropriateness of Bach, and admit: "Well, we wanted to sell CD's, and everybody likes Bach" ??

Additionally, I can't help feeling that Kettlewell loses his case with his over-enthusiasm. In logical terms, no one could actually explore Mars 'reflectively' at all. In fact, the combination of solar ultraviolet radiation combined with the average temperature of -63oC means that an exploration of Mars would be a very cautious one. Perhaps the use of Holst's depiction of an agressive 'God of War' Mars may have been cliche, but would have stood up more in terms of reality.

I guess poetic license can be granted for the generation of the wind sounds, but also for the concept and more importantly, the atmosphere one experiences when listening to it. Play it to someone without explaining it first and they may think they're listening to a recording of 'Bach Outdoors', because, the Martian wind sounds like the wind we experience here in Earth!! So then I thought, 'Well of course, and what idiot thought it would sound any different?'.

I have come to the conclusion that Winds of Mars is interesting only for it's novelty, and not for its concept. It features a proficient pianist playing some of Bach's sarabandes and well known airs. The wind can be identified at the beginning and end of the pieces, however apart from the odd gust (!), it is sometimes difficult to define the rumble of this Martian wind - I suppose its subtlety may be part of its appeal.

There is also something almost paradoxical about using modern means to capture alien data, using technology to convert this into sound, and then combining that modern musical creation with musical antiquity - but perhaps that's where the charm lies.