April, 2026, and Artemis II takes humans further into space than any other lunar mission in history, triggering not only memories of Jonathan King’s 1965 hit, Everyone’s Gone to the Moon,which filled the Kodak Super-8 pre-processing darkroom in Hemel Hempstead on a regular basis in the summer of 1969, but also the need to rehearse Ola Gjeilo’s The Spheres for our next concert in June.
The music of the spheres. It has been over 2,500 years since the geocentric Pythagoras, taking a break from his obsession with triangles, first suggested that the Sun, the Moon and the planets generated their own music as they orbited the earth, creating a sort of cosmic symphony imperceptible to the human ear.
Fast forward a few millennia and Shakespeare is getting in on the act: There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st but in his motion like an angel sings Lorenzo tells Jessica in The Merchant of Venice, while across the North Sea the connection between music and astronomy has captured the imagination of the German polymath, Johannes Kepler, who believes that this harmony – Musica universalis – while inaudible, can still be heard by the soul.
Into the 21st century and when the Norwegian composer and pianist, Ola Gjeilo, began to write his Sunrise Mass, he wanted “the musical journey to evolve from transparent and spacey to something earthy and warm; from nebulous and pristine, through more emotional landscapes, to ultimately solid” so that the opening movement, The Spheres, which I need to rehearse, is an ethereal layering of sound, each voice overlapping and slowly changing as the harmonies progress.
And Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting, the wilderness, wild animals, transitions, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children and chastity (to be a Greek God you had to be good at multi-tasking)? It is said that it was the image of Apollo riding his chariot across the face of the Sun that inspired the naming of the first moon missions. And just 50 years later his twin sister, Artemis, (who helped her mother, Leto, with his birth) finally got involved too.
She was a soprano.
The music of the spheres.
By David O’Dell, polymath, tenor, teacher and Treasurer of the Chorus. So, what was he doing in Hemel Hempstead? Working in another sphere?! Ed
23 April 2026
PS 23 April is Shakespeare’s birthday and, allegedly, his death-day (some years later!)