h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes, I have to agree that It would be difficult to describe this piece in real life words, so I wont try

This piece of music got me interested in listening to more of RVW's work, and he very quickly became my favourite composer by a country mile. People often say to me that his compositions sound like film music, and I guess that some of them do, and of course, some of them are! But let's not forget, I try to tell them, that film music as we know it didn't really get going until until the mid-30s, and by then, RVW had written most of his masterpieces, up to and including his 4th symphony. For anyone interested, there's a very fine Vaughan Williams website with a 203k mp3 of the original Tallis theme here http://www.cs.qub.ac.uk/~J.Collis/guides/tallis.html

As for the piece itself, I've never gotten tired of it in the 25 years since I first heard it. And have you ever seen the full score for it? Holy Moly!! Two bars of 5/12 followed by a bar of 3/4 followed by four bars of 13/8. It must be a bugger to conduct. About this time last year I just caught the tail end of a programme about it on BBC2 one Saturday night when I got home from work. Andrew Davies was conducting members of the BBCSO in Gloucester Cathedral in a superb performance, but I missed the main body of the programme which told all about how the Fantasia was written. If anyone has a video of that programme I'd gladly trade something or send the cost of blank tape and postage.

I couldn't agree more.It must be one of the best pieces of music ever.I think the original theme was called "On rising from a bed of death"