Music

When I Consider the Heavens (2005)
for SSATTB chorus, electronic sound and projected digital images

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University of South Carolina Concert Choir
Larry Wyatt, director

When I Consider the Heavens (2005) is a new media work for SAATTB chorus, electronic sound and projected digital images. Using Psalm 8 and Psalm 19 as its point of departure, it weaves voice, image and electric sound into a multimedia tapestry that celebrates the revelation of God in nature and the new age of discovery made possible by one of the greatest inventions of the past century, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Written for the University of South Carolina Concert Choir, the premiere performance with given at the USC School of Music Recital Hall in Columbia, SC under the direction of Larry Wyatt as part of the Prisms on Creativity multimedia event which took place February 25, 2005. The USC Concert Choir also performed the work on their Spring 2005 concert tour which included performances in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and at Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans, Louisiana.

More about When I Consider the Heavens

The music was inspired by ancient accounts of the music of the spheres. For example, the work opens with electronic music depicting the sound of Anaximenes' crystal spheres. Anaximenes, it is said, conceived of the stars as "ornaments attached to a crystal sphere that revolved around the earth" (James 1993). The choir depicts Plato's Sirens. In The Republic (Book X), Plato describes a universe where Sirens sit singing on the surface of the concentric planetary rings; singing together, the Sirens "form a harmonious sound, after Plato's time interpreted literally as the music of the spheres–audible to but unnoticed by mortals who hear it from birth" (Haar).

The projected digital images are from the NASA STScI catalogue of publicly released Hubble Space Telescope images available at <hubblesite.org>. The opening image (shown above) is said to be one of humankind's deepest optical views of the universe*

The electronic sound part was created using Csound which is available at: <csounds.com> and the text, which is presented below, was freely adapted from Psalm 8 and Psalm19.

Text

O LORD, our Lord, the heavens declare your glory;
  the stars reveal your hands.
Day upon day, night upon night;
  sends forth speech, proclaims knowledge.
There is no speech, nor words;
  yet their voice goes out through all the earth.

When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers;
  the fires across the sky proclaim your glory.
Suns burn, beam, blaze, shine across the firmament.

Days return in splendor;
&ngsp nights through silence sing.
O LORD, our Lord, the heavens declare your glory;
  the stars reveal your hands.

Psalms 8 & 19; Adapted by Reginald Bain.

© 2005 Reginald Bain
All rights reserved

* - Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and H. Yan (Spitzer Science Center, Caltech)

References

James Haar, 'Music of the spheres,' Grove Music Online (Accessed 27 January, 2006), <http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/article.html?section=music.19447>

Jamie James, The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science and The Natural Order of the Universe (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1995), p. 38.