17. First Light

McDonald Observatory, 2010 —

When a new telescope is commissioned and opens its optics for the first time, it captures its “first light.” I got up close below the 10-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope on Mt. Fowlkes at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains just a few years after it was commissioned.

When Texas State University opened its new Performing Arts Center, the 2015 inaugural concert in the acoustically splendid Recital Hall was a program metaphorically titled “First Light.”

Magic song

An older “First Light” reference is to native American mythology, which tells origin stories of the First People who emerge from the Dark World into the light of the rising sun (the Blackfoot sun god is called Natosi). In Navajo mythology, “Early on the morning of the fourth day, Little Dawn Boy began to sing his magic song. As he finished the song, an arch of shimmering light, all rose, violet, blue, and every color, and delicate as a veil, began to stretch from the summit of the purple mountain to the top of the white cliff. He then saw a bright rainbow bridge grow before his eyes. Singing with delight, he hastened over the Rainbow Bridge. As he ran a wind sprang up and blew a many-colored mist to the top of the cliff.” [First People: American Indian Legends]

Gas giants

Gustav Holst’s The Planets (1917) is revered for its masterful orchestration evoking the majesty of the solar system. The final movement portrays the dim, distant last light we can see in it — the planet Neptune’s pure, mystical light.

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We all enjoy the mysterious splendor of moon rise, large and deeply-hued in the eastern evening sky. My sonic metaphor for that visual phenomenon portrays instead the rising of Jupiter, the largest object in the solar system other than the sun itself. It only looks much, much smaller to us than the moon because it is so much farther away.

One of my favorite Mozart symphonies is Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K.551. His longest and last symphony, it is nicknamed “Jupiter” — fitting that his lengthiest and greatest symphony is named for the largest planet, a great gas giant. A vivid musical motive begins and generates the majestic final movement.

I relentlessly deploy that motive as the canonic subject for Jupiter Rising. My rhythmic setting of the motive is designed irregularly, so that the two lines seldom move at the same time in what I would call a contrapuntal accent. This creates a floating quality of the contrapuntal rhythm. At some moments, as many as eight contrapuntal soundings overlap each other in a cloud-like texture.

One refreshing feature of a sound sculpture is this freedom from the metric march of time. The music does not progress, but instead creates a sonic cloud to be experienced by relaxed absorption and contemplation.

The largest of Saturn’s moons is also the second largest moon in the Solar System. Its dense atmosphere obscures a unique feature: it is the only place beyond Earth on which clear evidence has been found of stable bodies of surface liquid.

That may be partly why an experimental extreme-depth earth-ocean submersible vehicle was named for it. The Titan submersible famously imploded in 2023 while headed down to view the shipwreck of the Titanic in the cold North Atlantic.

Our imaginary musical exploration of the moon Titan, its atmosphere and ocean depths, is completely tranquil, experiencing only gentle waves and currents of dark and brighter sonorities.

Nebula

Far beyond our solar system, nebulae are where other stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. One of the most familiar and well studied objects in space, the Orion Nebula is enormous, 24 light-years across with a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun.

Debussy’s “Nuages” (Trois Nocturnes, 1892-99) depicts earthly clouds as gently undulating, colorful orchestral lines and chords. For a soundscape of cosmic nebulae, my generating concept is similar: a slow, almost timeless metamorphosis of complex 4-pitch constellations, some bright, some darker “celestial” harmonies.

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