Perseverance: Adventure On Mars

Amongst our loads of news this year, much of it not so good, one story blazes through the sky bringing wonder and smiles – the Perseverance rover has been deployed on Mars. It arrived there, landing February 18, and as we write these notes on July 10, this amazing rover the size of a car has been exploring Mars for 142 days, using cutting edge technology including a revolutionary mini helicopter, which allowed unique planetary powered flight for the first time in April 2021.

If you want your students to learn more about the project, there is much to study about the mission on Wikipedia, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's site, on NASA's great site full of images and audio, and via Google searches.

Our recorder feature for this issue is a nod to this monumental accomplishment. Part 1 is for G, A, and B on soprano and the piece is fine with just this part. There is a second soprano part that uses E, G, A, B, and C, this one slightly harder but still very playable. We have also included a beginning level alto recorder part for the many recorder programs that include them. It uses A, C, D, E', F', and G'.

Our work was inspired by a real artistic connoisseur of Mars, Gustav Holst. After a short evocative intro, we go into an A section fighting across the rough terrain of the red planet. This section is followed by a lovely folk-like theme, rich with the quiet of our alien surroundings. After our form returns to the A section, it concludes with a pounding series of dissonant clusters resolving to a solid open fifth on the tonic A.

If you'd like to follow along with the piano/recorder score, we have provided a downloadable version for you on our web site. This song also includes a Diving Deeper Into The Music interactive learning assessment.