Moonlight… or the music of the night (1/2)
At night, the moon shines placid and silent. This soothing image illuminates the human spirit and becomes a source of romantic inspiration, a mirror for lovers’ feelings and a source of contemplative charm for artists.
The moon, the earth’s natural satellite, is at the center of some of the world’s greatest songwriters, including Frank Sinatra, R.E.M., Indochine, The Police, David Bowie and the immortal Pink Floyd.
But what if the Earth had had more than a single satellite? Satellites are not a rarity in the solar system. What if the Earth, like Saturn, Uranus or Neptune, had had an abundance of moons? Would all these moons play the same role in human poetic, literary and musical imagery? The question, of course, remains unanswered. Although the uniqueness of our satellite may have played an important role.
It’s also interesting to note that the lunar imagery of the songs is quite different from that of fictional literature, which has often dealt more with fantastic journeys to the moon. The true story of Lucian of Samosate, a Greek writer from the Hellenistic period, Ariosto’s Roland furieux, Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone , John Willkins’ The discovery of a world in the moone, or Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac’s Les États et Empires de la Lune.
Songs, on the other hand, often simply call upon the moon to witness the fortunes or misfortunes of human beings.
Such is the case in the song Blue Moon (Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart), where the narrator, who confides his melancholy and loneliness to the moon, finds love again in the course of the song. Or Walking on the Moon (The Police), where the lightness of the moment when one is in love and the absence of gravity with the equally light rhythm of reggae can only be inspired by the moon.
As you’ll recall, on July 20, 1969, the two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, descended on the moon and left their footprints and the American flag on the Sea of Tranquility.
A few days before the launch of the Apollo mission, David Bowie, with his Space Oddity, sends a certain Major Tom into space, but something goes wrong and Earthbase loses control with the astronaut who ends up wandering in space. It took a lot of careless text reading in the BBC house to use the song during coverage of the moon landing.
Six times in succession, astronauts returned to the moon, the last of these journeys taking place in 1972. In the meantime, the moon hasn’t become as busy a place as people expected. But even if our satellite remains uninhabited as before, we can well imagine that a trampled and draped moon is no longer the same moon, or at least lends itself less to the activation of the literary, poetic and also musical imaginations of earthlings. Perhaps this explains the decline in the number of songs about the moon over the years. It’s highly likely, then, that the next mission to the moon, scheduled for 2024, will trigger a new wave of songs dedicated to our satellite!
Federica, Musicology Manager, Riponne site
