Red Planet

Rose, Gregory


score & parts


Sample score



0m 00s




Flexible Ensemble with Keyboard

About the work

This piece for flexible ensemble was commissioned by CoMA in 2014, Red Planet was inspired by the spectacular images of Mars that have appeared through the exploratory work carried out by a succession of mainly US spacecraft over the past fifty years or so. The vastness of the mountains and valleys on the planet is hard for us to conceive, as is its inclement weather patterns. Mars is, simply, unimaginable. Red Planet attempts to reflect some aspects of the planet through contrasting musical scenes. Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System and is named after the Roman god of war. It is often described as the ‘Red Planet’ because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth.

