The Cosmos TV series was broadcast during the year I did my 'A' levels, it inspired me to complain about the way we were being taught science. Where our teaching was dry and mechanical, Cosmos was filled with wonder. Not everyone (ok, no one) in the class shared my views: the series, they said, was just an endless montage of shots of Carl Sagan's upturned nostrils as he gazed at the heavens.
Here are a couple of quotes from the track notes on the gatefold sleeve. Of Vangelis' Heaven and Hell, part I, "We ourselves are made of starstuff. We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." And in connection with the Bulgarian Sheperdess Song, "These contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — looking outward to the grandest of mysteries returns us to ourselves. As our understanding deepens, so does our awe." To which, I say "Hear! Hear!" and "Rock on, Dr Sagan!" (Errr, RIP.) For more in the same vein, see here on Wikipedia.
Sagan evidently wanted his music to capture the same combination of futuristic Enlightenment optimism and 'timeless' humanist values. Translation: a couple of ethnic folk recordings, parts of the Classic FM Top 10 plus synthesised updates of the classics — and a shedload of Vangelis.
Around the time I bought this record, in the early '80s, I saw a lot of Tomita records in the racks next to Klaus Schulze and Popul Vuh but the covers made me slightly wary and I never bought one. His version of Bach, included here, did nothing to convert me. Interesting to be reminded of acts like Synergy, who get omitted from recent histories of electronic music (not that I'm proposing to rehabilitate them; I'd omit them too if I were curating anything similar).
One time in about 1986, my friend John B picked me up from Tunbridge Wells station in his TR6. Driving round town with the top down, he had a classical piece on the cassette player. "This is one of my favourite pieces of music," he advised me, "It's called 'Canaan'." Well, that was how he pronounced it. It was, however, Pachelbel's Canon, included on this record. Oh, how ruthlessly we mocked his gauche attempts to pretend he'd had an expensive education like us! We still get mileage out of this faux pas to this day, in fact, whenever he threatens to get uppity.
Update, March 2010: I've just spent a few good minutes surfing Cosmos excerpts on YouTube, and can't believe that I omitted to include one in this post. They're so good that I'm breaking my usual "no post-hoc tampering (beyond correcting typos)" rule, and inserting one. A tour de force with cracking use of Vangelis — and the nostril shot comes at 6 minutes 25 seconds.
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