Music Man

Holst's "Planets Suite" ends with Neptune floating mysteriously away into the void of space - so what about Pluto?  There is no Pluto (not in the original) because when Holst wrote the piece, it had not yet been discovered.  Or had it?  For some time astronomers had been aware of "wobbles" in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, and some of them - in particular one Percival Lowell - had become convinced that this was being caused by a further planet out beyond Neptune.  Lowell called this "Planet X" and devoted his life to finding it, but he died disappointed.  In fact he did find it - or rather among the hundreds of photographs taken by his observatory during his lifetime there were a couple showing Planet X - but nobody realised this at the time or for many years afterwards, and not until it had been officially "discovered" by another astronomer called Clyde Tombaugh.  There was a public discussion about what this new planet should be called, and eventually Pluto was chosen.  It is a very small planet - smaller than our moon - and indeed it has been suggested that it's not really a planet at all, but one of Neptune's moons that has somehow escaped its gravitational pull.  In 2000, the English composer Colin Matthews was commissioned to write a new movement representing Pluto to add to Holst's suite, although it has to be said it has not been universally welcomed, and is seldom performed.