PLUTO

posted by James Reel

    If the new definition of “planet” just devised by the International Astronomy Union (IAU) is ratified next week, Pluto will retain its status as a planet after all. A diminutive planet, though; a new category, “pluton,” is being created for Pluto and three other bodies in the solar system that are just a bit undernourished to count as full-strength planets. (“Pluton” sounds more like a particle than a planet, doesn’t it?)
    I have nothing against Pluto itself, but I was hoping that it might be downgraded simply so we could divorce British composer Colin Matthews’ “Pluto” movement from Holst’s The Planets. Around 2000, conductor Kent Nagano unwisely asked Matthews to “complete” Holst’s suite with a piece depicting the one planet that hadn’t been discovered when Holst wrote the original work. This was a very bad idea for several reasons. First, The Planets has nothing to do with astronomy; as I’ve been belaboring for years, and as Tim Mangan pointed out in a recent concert review, The Planets is about astrology. That’s why, for example, Mars is presented as “The Bringer of War”—that’s the planet’s astrological association. (If Holst had intended a tour of the physical solar system, wouldn’t he have written an “Earth” movement?)
    So not only is Pluto conceptually out of place, but tacking anything onto the end of The Planets is a horrible idea; extra music ruins that long, ethereal, death-haunted fade-out of the women’s chorus at the end of “Neptune.” Besides which, Matthews’ music sounds nothing like Holst’s. Matthews’ “Pluto” deserves to be heard, but only as an independent piece.
    If you want to learn about the solar system, turn not to music but to various reader-friendly books by my astronomer friend William K. Hartmann.