The Harmonies of Science & Music
Since humanity first looked up at the stars, there has been a natural link between our music and the vastness of our universe. How else can we express that inexpressible feeling of being a small part of an ever expanding cosmos? In just a few recent decades, we’ve learned that there are planets around on average every star in the Milky Way, and that black holes are real objects which conduct the motions of matter at the hearts of galaxies. If we cannot visit these places, we can do the next best thing and take a voyage with the universal language of music.
“Dream of Light and Dark”, commissioned by the ACCO and Multiverse Concert Series, celebrates the taking of the first picture of a black hole M87 by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019. Einstein’s theory of relativity of 1915 predicted the existence of black holes, but it took over a century to take a picture of one. How? By turning the whole Earth into a telescope! My composition dramatises this extraordinary process. Pairs of musical notes stand for pairs of telescopes around the world, whose signals combine to build up an image from the noise. The farther apart the telescopes, the finer the detail they can resolve; in my musical metaphor, wider intervals generate faster rhythms. These relationships set a series of chaotic dances in motion on the string orchestra.
Eventually, black hole M87 appears surrounded by a whirling disk of superheated plasma called the “accretion disk”. You’ll hear the irregular shape of this disk translated into music as a pulsing canon in the high violins, serving as an accompaniment to the folk melody “The Elfin Knight”. This melody, one of the Child Ballads, has traveled from the Scottish Highlands, through the UK, to Boston and on into the New World:
The elphin knight sits on yon hill,
Ba, ba, ba, lilli ba
He blaws his horn both loud and shrill,
The wind hath blown my plaid awa
He blowes it east, he blowes it west,
He blowes it where he lyketh best.
This image of a faery knight blowing his horn into the wind offers a fitting musical companion to the swirling black hole. The ballad’s journey across the Atlantic also echoes the worldwide collaboration behind the Event Horizon Telescope. As humanity grows up in the universe, our science and our music can travel the world together: inspiring us with new discoveries.
I’m grateful for the EHT team and its lead Shep Doeleman for their time and assistance in composing this new work.
David Ibbett, 2026
