The title of an album by
Vangelis which contains two parts:
- Heaven and Hell Part I (So Long Ago So Clear)
- Heaven and Hell Part II
While it is not the most inspiring of his works, there is a melody that will haunt someone who listens to it. At 13 minutes into the first part, a sudden transition from loud synthesizer to a simple piano... then, high up a simple melody emerges and grows. You can hear yourself soaring through the heavens. Around the music builds - each part adding slowly to the sum - the piano is still there with a simple pulse. The pulse of the heart. All around it are constructed forms and synthesized notes sliding through the scales. It rises to a crescendo of sound and then slowly fades off.
While this description lacks the actual notes played it becomes immediately obvious to anyone who grew up and watched PBS in the early 1980s - it is the haunting melody that played when flying through space and time on the ship of our imagination... as we listed to Carl Sagan on Cosmos.