Mars Bringer Of War

It's a piece by Gustav Holst from his suite The Planets. I admit I prefer works from the Classical & Baroque periods with an occassional fondness for the Romantic but there are a few 20th Century pieces that I enjoy. The Planet suite is one of them. The opening piece starts off in 5/4 time but shifts to 5/2 & then later 3/4 (told ya I liked uncommon time signatures). Its dissonance & dark haunting melodies have made it one of Holst's most recognizable works & in it you can almost hear premonitions of William's Imperial March from the Star Wars soundtracks. Wikipedia's media section on The Planets' page has the first four movements of the suite (Mars, Venus, Jupiter & Uranus respectively) in "play in browser" as well as downloadable formats. If you scroll down to the 2002-2003 season you'll find The Peabody Institute has MP3's of The Planets suite as well. But for your convenience here's the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's vid of their performance of Mars, the Bringer of War (Part 1 & Conclusion) (& on the right side of the screen you'll see vids of them doing more of The Planets suite if you care to listen - & I do recommend checking out Jupiter if nothing else).

What follows will be about war. One in which we are currently engaged.

Witness Pics



The first target I shot with the new Witness Elite Match in 10mm. This was using American Eagle 180 grain FMJ's which traveled around 1025 fps. The distance to the target was roughly 30 feet.


The second target was shot with handloads. Speer 180 grain TMJ's on top of 8.5 grains of Longshot. They were clocked at around 1180 fps.

Here's another one of the targets hopefully in an easier to see format.




8.9 grains of Longshot pushed those Speer 180 grain TMJ's to around 1240 fps



& this is the first target shot with handloads again.

As I said, er typed it was only around 30 feet because I was mainly trying to chronograph the handloads but the accuracy doesn't seem to be too bad considering I've never been a great pistol shot.

For a more detailed review see Can I Get A Witness Part Two