Art and the hard sciences seem polar opposites, one an expression of creative inner forces, the other the study of the external forces that shape our world. But the sciences' dry mathematical formulations are merely a notational expression of the beauty that is the universe, the forces that drive it and are found in every organic structure within it. Think of a snowflake, or James Watson and Francis Crick's awed reaction to the perfection and glory of the DNA double helix.
Giovanni Pierluigi de Palestrina's music is equally magnificent, his ecclesiastical polyphonic compositions a musical expression of the purity and perfection of the Great Creator. In 1555,
Palestrina composed the Missa Pape Marcelli, a mass for the late Pope Marcellus II, one of the Church's most exquisite religious works. The title track of
Ian Boddy's
Aurora is based on "Kryie" the first movement of Marcelli's mass, although the swooping planes and sonic effects that initially sweep across the piece give little hint of that. Eventually, though, the cathedral chords coalesce out of the cosmic clutter, taking form, then hold, as if the music has been traveling to us over the centuries from a galaxy far, far away. But this is the end of
Boddy's journey, one which begins with a streak of noise roaring by, perhaps the reverberation of the Big Bang, which disappears into a "Gravity Well" of swirling gases. No shapes or forms coalesce within it, just an amorphous, atmospheric, aural mass of sonics. But with "Ecliptic," a slowly percolating rhythm takes hold, like nucleotides pinging through the air, while overhead hints of melody stream through. Birds seem to twitter from afar, the tempo picks up, the melodies increase, as if a newly born world is unfolding before our ears.
The majestic "Vox Lumina" is darker, with a rhythm that's almost industrial in parts, but with a decidedly organic feel. Like the great natural forces at play in the universe, "Lumina" pulses with power, the entire piece capturing the chemical chain reactions that throb in the heart of every star.
And between the stars lie vast distances filled with little more than anti-matter and space gasses, an eerie nothingness that "Zero G" brilliantly encapsulates. We should be terrified by it all, the forces we can not control, the uncertainty of space itself, but still we are driven to explore beyond the confines of our planet, and so rocket-powered astronauts reach "Escape Velocity" and touch the unknown. Driven by a palpitating rhythm and bubbly, almost popcorn, synths, "Escape" takes off, its rhythm-like sparks flying off into the night sky, while overhead a majestic melody sweeps across the sky. The excitement of flight and discovery feeds through the piece, as the interplay of synths and rhythm propel the number ever deeper into space. And it's there, light-years away, that the explorers encounter the glory of
Palestrina's "Krista," delivered by
Boddy like a hymn to the sun and our world itself. Centuries apart, the two musicians have striven towards the same goal, to aurally capture the power, perfection, and glory of our world and the force(s) that created it, the 16th century artist seeing it through a religious prism, his modern counterpart through the scientific and technological realm. Like art and science, they seem worlds apart, but in reality they're as close as twins. ~ Jo-Ann Greene