Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Thoughts Of Old Blighty

6 Comments

I agree with Lileks:

As I’ve noted before – this week, I think – the middle portion of Holst’s “Jupiter” has always hit me as the most English Thing Ever – uncomplicated at its heart, outwardly stern, stoic in its cultural patriotism, sweeping up everyone in a broad assertion of national identity that prides itself for the treble virtues of tradition, decency, and resolution. Doesn’t mean that’s the case, of course; music seduces. There’s a reason the Sirens sang instead of sending sailors well-written notes. One of the most moving national anthems I’ve ever heard is for Oceania, from “1984.”

But.

Holst captured something at its peak and its prime, a moment of leonine gravity as true as it was idealized. I’ve waited decades to go there and stand at the place where I start to hum it to myself. Wonder where that’ll be.

Anyway. My daughter has been to a dozen countries because I want her to get the flavor for the Marvelous Elsewhere early on, and also experience the joys of seeing home through new eyes when you return. We have the occasional dinnertime conversation about why America is different, and why America is good, arguments to counter the schoolmates who say the world would be better off if there wasn’t an America. (You can imagine the usual reasons.)

I hope the lessons take.

Sadly, too few want to teach them. And that is also my favorite movement from The Planets. When I was a kid, all I knew it as was the theme to the evening news (Huntley and Brinkley, I think, on NBC), but just the opening of it. Hmmmm…[googling] Yup. I never heard the whole thing until I bought an album of the entire suite, and I loved the middle section.

[Update a few minutes later]

Amazing. I still tear up when I listen to that passage. Just beautiful. You can hear where John Williams got a lot of his influence for the movie scores.

[Afternoon update]

OK, there seems to be some dispute about the Huntley-Brinkley theme, and it does seem to be Beethoven. OK, so which news show from the sixties used the Holst?

6 thoughts on “Thoughts Of Old Blighty”

  1. I clicked on the Jupiter piece and it overlayed the audio from the Rush Limbaugh program running in another window. Then the big moving passage got walked on by the jingle for “Everclean CLog Free Gutters” and for a second I saw the image of Ernest P Worrell standing majestically on a ladder, his hands full of leaves, back lit by the sun and staring defiantly into the distance.

    I was moved.

  2. I thought the Huntley/Brinkley theme, perhaps just the close, was the second moment of Beethoven’s Ninth.

  3. ABC News “Issues and Answers” (1962 to 1968) used Holst’s “The Blacksmith” as a theme. However, Holst adapted that part of the Jupiter theme “Thaxstead” into “I Vow to Thee My Country.”

  4. You may be thinking of the old “CBS Reports”, I think it was. It’s theme was the big orchestral Simple Gifts recitation at the end of Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring”.

  6. Coming late to the party here, but the Huntley-Brinkley report definitely used the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth as their theme music.

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