Music fans are mourning David Bowie, who died Sunday at 69 after releasing a well-received new album and video last week. Bowie's music straddled genres for nearly 50 years, and some of his best work boasts gorgeous orchestral arrangements.
To take an early example, an orchestra adds a powerful sonic layer to his breakthrough single "Space Oddity" from 1969.
Strings add a dramatic backdrop to "Starman" from Bowie's 1972 album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars." (The song turned up again in the recent blockbuster "The Martian" starring Matt Damon.)
Then there's composer Philip Glass's "Low Symphony," a piece that reworked music from Bowie's 1977 album "Low." Glass said he loved taking Bowie's powerful melodies and placing them in a symphonic setting.
"The difficulty was there was a lot of material I never got to," Glass said. "One theme could become a 15-minute symphonic movement."
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