Nothing is not nothing: how a scientist set out to sing the story of our origins
Retrieved on:
Monday, June 26, 2023
More than 200 years later, our understanding of how the world began has changed spectacularly.
Key Points:
- More than 200 years later, our understanding of how the world began has changed spectacularly.
- As both a scientist and a chorister, I have waited for decades for someone to write a new oratorio that tells the creation story based on science.
Science is beautiful
- What could be more beautiful than the origin of species of increasing complexity, including our own?
- Researchers are closing in on an answer
So why isn’t the general public in love with science?
- Despite the explosion of scientific advances, I’m not sure we have advanced much in the integration of science into our culture.
- My early experiences began a lifelong search for ways to express the beauty and simplicity of science.
We are what we sing
- Religion uses music to foster community and bring comfort and certainty to our uncertain lives.
- For centuries, beliefs have been fostered and reinforced by constant repetition of a credo in one form or another.
- As a chorister, I have sung dozens of masses, requiems and oratorios, by Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Berlioz, Faure, Britten and more.
Nothing is not nothing
- Peter persuaded the Australian-born composer Nicholas Buc to write the music.
- To my surprise, the story unfolded in my head, in (rather unkempt) verse, and fell naturally into four sections: the universe, life, species, and humanity.
- First the Big Bang and the cacophony of early Earth, and our planet forming into the “pale blue dot no bigger than Neil Armstrong’s thumb”.
- Enter Darwin, singing calmly about his “one great law” against a chorus of hysterical hecklers.
Approaching the performance
- The premier of Origins is set for July 18 at the Melbourne Recital Centre.
- Some 225 years after Haydn’s Creation first dazzled audiences with its religious vision, an oratorio on our origins based in science will have arrived.