The Musical Voyager


Book Description

This collection of essays has been written by thirteen scholars, from five countries. It focuses on the musical activities of Hector Berlioz, viewed as a European phenomenon. The first part of the book discusses Berlioz's journeys to Breslau (1846), to Moscow and St Petersburg (1847 and 1867-68), and to London (especially in 1847 and 1853). In particular, the reception of Berlioz's music is placed under scrutiny. The second part of the book starts with a new history of the recitatives that Berlioz wrote for Weber's Der Freischütz, as they were used in Paris (1841, 1850), Berlin (1849), London (1850) and Milan (1872). Five essays then discuss different kinds of influence wrought by European literature on Berlioz, including Shakespeare's Othello and Goethe's Faust. The book's final section (source materials) contains the first complete anthology of London press reviews of Benvenuto Cellini in 1853; and new translations of three Russian articles on Berlioz by Vladimir Odoyevsky, from 1841 and 1847.




The Voyager Record


Book Description

Late summer 1977: two identical robotic spacecraft launch from Cape Canaveral. Their divergent paths through the solar system take them past gas giants, icy moons, asteroid belts, and eventually into the unknown of interstellar space. There, they will continue to travel on forever, the fastest moving objects ever created by humans. The Voyagers carry a message from Earth, a phonograph record plated with gold containing 27 songs, 118 images, and greetings in 55 languages meant to summarize all life on our planet for the extraterrestrials who might one day encounter the crafts. The Voyager Record : A Transmission is the record of that record: a history in fragments exploring how legendary astronomer Carl Sagan and his team attempted to press the entire human race into a single groove. Combining elements of poetry, flash fiction, and essay, Anthony Michael Morena creates a collage of music, observation, humor, and alienation. Giving the 38-year-old original playlist a B-side update, Morena's The Voyager Record calls out to its namesake across the billions of miles of emptiness: Send more answers.




Alien Listening


Book Description

"In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft contains world music and sounds of the Earth with which humanity represents itself to any extraterrestrial civilizations. This book asks the big questions that the Golden Record raises. Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years?"--




The Vinyl Frontier


Book Description

'Bursts with gloriously geeky detail.' The Telegraph Have you ever made someone you love a mix-tape? Forty years ago, a group of scientists, artists and writers gathered in a house in Ithaca, New York to work on the most important compilation ever conceived. It wasn't from one person to another, it was from Earth to the Cosmos. In 1977 NASA sent Voyager 1 and 2 on a Grand Tour of the outer planets. During the design phase of the Voyager mission, it was realised that this pair of plucky probes would eventually leave our solar system to drift forever in the unimaginable void of interstellar space. With this gloomy-sounding outcome in mind, NASA decided to do something optimistic. They commissioned astronomer Carl Sagan to create a message to be fixed to the side of Voyager 1 and 2 – a plaque, a calling card, a handshake to any passing alien that might one day chance upon them. The result was the Voyager Golden Record, a genre-hopping multi-media metal LP. A 90-minute playlist of music from across the globe, a sound essay of life on Earth, spoken greetings in multiple languages and more than 100 photographs and diagrams, all painstakingly chosen by Sagan and his team to create an aliens' guide to Earthlings. The record included music by J.S. Bach and Chuck Berry, a message of peace from US president Jimmy Carter, facts, figures and dimensions, all encased in a golden box. The Vinyl Frontier tells the story of NASA's interstellar mix-tape, from first phone call to final launch, when Voyager 1 and 2 left our planet bearing their hopeful message from the Summer of '77 to a distant future.




A Musical Offering


Book Description

A lyrical celebration of storytelling, of childhood, and of the transformative power of music. Tracing a circular course that echoes Bach’s Goldberg Variations , Luis Sagasti’s second book to appear in English takes the guise of a musical scheherazade, recounting story after story, vibrating to celestial harmonies. From the music born of the sun to the music sent into space on the Voyager mission, from Rothko to rock music, from the composers of the concentration camps to a weeping room for Argentinian conscripts in the Falklands, A Musical Offering traverses the shifting sands of fiction and history.




Voyager


Book Description

A brilliant new account of the Voyager space program-its history, scientific impact, and cultural legacy Launched in 1977, the two unmanned Voyager spacecraft have completed their Grand Tour to the four outer planets, and they are now on course to become the first man-made objects to exit our solar system. To many, this remarkable achievement is the culmination of a golden age of American planetary exploration, begun in the wake of the 1957 Sputnik launch. More than this, Voyager may be one of the purest expressions of exploration in human history. For more than five hundred years the West has been powered by the impulse to explore, to push into a wider world. In this highly original book, Stephen Pyne recasts Voyager in the tradition of Magellan, Columbus, Cook, Lewis and Clark, and other landmark explorers. The Renaissance and Enlightenment-the First and Second Ages of Discovery- sent humans across continents and oceans to find new worlds. In the Third Age, expeditions have penetrated the Antarctic ice, reached the floors of the oceans, and traveled to the planets by new means, most spectacularly via semi-autonomous robot. Voyager probes how the themes of motive and reward are stunningly parallel through all three ages. Voyager, which gave us the first breathtaking images of Jupiter and Saturn, changed our sense of our own place in the universe.




Voyager's Greatest Hits


Book Description

It has been over forty years since the Voyager mission sent the twin space probes into space. They traveled to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and now they journey beyond our solar system into interstellar space, where no probe has ventured before. Learn the fascinating story of the scientists, how the Voyager probes work, where the probes have been and what they’ve seen, and what they carry on board—including the Golden Record, a recording of sounds and images about life on Earth. Critically acclaimed science writer Alexandra Siy chronicles the ongoing saga of the Voyagers in a lively story full of nail-biting moments, inspiring scientists, and incredible NASA images. An engaging and captivating STEM title that deserves a place in most libraries—School Library Journal STARRED REVIEW A lively, informative, and inspiring story of space exploration—Kirkus Reviews A timely introduction to the Voyager mission—Booklist It's an engaging and readily accessible account of a remarkable—and ongoing—scientific success story—Publisher's Weekly Chicago Public Library’s 2017 Best of the Best Books selection




Murmurs of Earth


Book Description

In 1977, two extraodinary spacecraft called Voyager were launched to the stars. Affixed to each Voyager craft was a gold-coated copped phonograph record as a message to possible extra-terrestrial civilizations that might encounter the spacecraft in some distant space and time. Each record contained 118 photographs of our planet; almost 90 minutes of the world's greatest music; an evolutionary audio essay on "The Sounds of Earth"; and greetings in almost sixty human languages (and one whale language). This book is an account, written by those chiefly responsible for the contents of the Voyager Record, of why they did it, how they selected the repertoire, and precisely what the record contains.




Voyager


Book Description

Srikanth Reddy’s second book of poetry probes this world’s cosmological relation to the plurality of all possible worlds. Drawing its name from the spacecraft currently departing our solar system on an embassy to the beyond, Voyager unfolds as three books within a book and culminates in a chilling Dantean allegory of leadership and its failure in the cause of humanity. At the heart of this volume lies the historical figure of Kurt Waldheim—Secretary-General of the U.N. from 1972-81 and former intelligence officer in Hitler’s Wehrmacht—who once served as a spokesman for humanity while remaining silent about his role in the collective atrocities of our era. Resurrecting this complex figure, Reddy’s universal voyager explores the garden of forking paths hidden within every totalizing dream of identity.




The Musical Human


Book Description

"Michael Spitzer has pulled off the impossible: a Guns, Germs and Steel for music." --Daniel Levitin A colossal history spanning cultures, time, and space to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. 165 million years ago saw the birth of rhythm. 66 million years ago was the first melody. 40 thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument. Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story. The Musical Human takes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages – from Bach to BTS and back – to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, looking at music in our everyday lives; music in world history; and music in evolution, from insects to apes, humans to AI. Through this journey we begin to understand how music is central to the distinctly human experiences of cognition, feeling and even biology, both widening and closing the evolutionary gaps between ourselves and animals in surprising ways. The Musical Human boldly puts the case that music is the most important thing we ever did; it is a fundamental part of what makes us human.