Horizons

Hackett wrote it over about a year, from the Prelude of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G major and with Tudor composers such as William Byrd in mind. He has said it had the brevity of Tudor music, and asked whether it rested on a Bach progression, agreed that it pretty much did. He first played it on electric guitar and doubted it suited a band; he did not expect Genesis to record it, but they heard him play it and liked it. It was taped at Island Studios in August 1972 during Bob Potter's short spell as producer, and Foxtrot credits it to all five members. Placed just before Supper's Ready, it is often taken for that song's introduction, and Hackett has said it works as a starter for it.

He recorded it again as a solo piece for Bay of Kings in 1983 and once more for Genesis Revisited II in 2012.

Live

setlist.fm logs 484 performances by Hackett, his sixth most played song, and the tribute band The Musical Box has played it 290 times. He played it in an acoustic set for the German television show Musikladen in 1978, paired with Kim, and versions survive from Hammersmith Odeon in 1979, Central TV in Nottingham in 1990, the Royal Albert Hall in 2013 and the Foxtrot at Fifty show in Brighton in 2022. The upload in the hypersongs web is a later solo performance by Hackett on nylon-string guitar.