I was 13 and in 8th grade when Carl Sagan's Cosmos documentary series aired on PBS in 1980. I watched each episode for extra credit in Mr Hollingshead's science class. I loved it. Carl Sagan in his dandelion Spaceship of the Imagination, pushing control buttons as if he really were out there flying around the universe.
I loved the music used on the program, especially the opening theme, a section of Heaven and Hell, Part 1, by Vangelis, called 'Movement 3'. This recording represented our amazing universe in all its mystery, beauty, vastness and isolation, and our triumphant history of exploring and understanding it.
The opening minute is beautiful. A delicate piano travels through space searching for companionship. It meets a single synth voice that accompanies it from 0:40 - 1:00, exquisitely warm but also plaintively longing, as if to say 'hey out there in space, can anyone hear us?' The part after that is like some monks chanting quietly while the piano plays and the synths build. These last few minutes were usually faded out on Cosmos, as the episode would begin, the handsomely geeky-cool Carl Sagan would start tripping out on the billions and billions of stars in the cosmic stuff, and my little brain would struggle to make sense of it all.
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