The Songs of Distant Earth and the Roots of Inspiration

For a long time I've enjoyed the music of Mike Oldfield — especially his longer, more complex works. Until a few years ago his stuff wasn't easy for me to get my hands on. Back when record shops existed, they didn't often carry his records. But with the rise of online music he's a lot more available.

Recently I've been listening to Oldfield's 1994 album The Songs of Distant Earth. It's a "concept album" based on Arthur C. Clarke's 1986 novel The Songs of Distant Earth, which in turn was expanded from Clarke's 1958 short story "The Songs of Distant Earth." (When you know you've got a good title, you might as well keep using it.) Inevitably, I dug out my copy of the book in order to re-read it. It's better than I remember, actually. I think I've aged into it.

According to Wikipedia, quoting Mike Oldfield's autobiography, the project was suggested by a record executive at Warner Music . . . but after re-reading the novel I have some suspicions.

Chapter 52 of The Songs of Distant Earth is called "The Songs of Distant Earth," and comes near the end of the novel. The mighty starship Magellan is preparing to leave the planet Thalassa and the locals have arranged a farewell ceremony. The high point is the performance of a work called Lamentation for Atlantis. That's one of the tracks on Oldfield's album, but the description of the fictional composition is a pretty good match for the whole album The Songs of Distant Earth by Mike Oldfield. In effect, he wrote the work Clarke described.

But right before Clarke's description of Lamentation for Atlantis, there's this:

It still seemed a miracle that after their art had reached technological perfection, composers of music could find anything new to say. For two thousand years, electronics had given them complete command over every sound audible to the human ear, and it might have been thought that all the possibilities of the medium had been exhausted.

There had, indeed, been about a century of beepings and twitterings and electroeructations before composers had mastered their now infinite powers and had once again successfully married technology and art.

I can't shake the suspicion that Mike Oldfield came across that passage — perhaps while reading the novel after the Warner Music exec suggested it — and read that little dig about "beepings and twitterings and electroeructations." And I suspect that noted electronic composer Mike Oldfield may have been a little miffed. I suspect that's when he decided to write the album, and show Sir Arthur that it wouldn't take a century for a composer to "marry technology and art" and produce an electronic work worthy of Clarke's own fictional musical masterpiece.

That's the best way to respond to something: show you can equal or surpass it. 

This is all supposition, and if Mr. Oldfield happens to read this and wants to refute me, he's welcome to do so. Meanwhile I think I know the real story.

Comments

[Watchcase]

You have me intrigued now. I must find the album...