Music For Places IV: The Rings of Saturn (2018)
Chapter 1.1: Norwich (Window)
The opening track, where the narrator is looking out the hospital room window in Norwich and thinks of Gregor Samsa in Berlin, in the story by Kafka, who finds liberation by being able to look out the window.
Chapter 1.2: The Quincunx
Five sequences of 5 notes (seeds), that can be played in C# Dorian (5 Sharps) or Eb Dorian (5 Flats). Can be in the meter of 5/8, 5/4 or 4/4 as a polyrhythm (5 Against 4). The seeds can be played in any octave, and any chord can be played pandiatonically against the sequences.
"True to his own prescription, Browne records the patterns which recur in the seemingly infinite diversity of forms; in The Garden of Cyrus, for instance, he draws the quincunx, which is composed by using the corners of a regular quadrilateral and the point at which its diagonals intersect. Browne identifies this structure everywhere, in animate and inanimate matter: in certain crystalline forms, in starfish and sea urchins, in the vertebrae of mammals and the backbones of birds and fish, in the skins of various species of snake, in the crosswise prints left by quadrupeds, in the physical shapes of caterpillars, butterflies, silkworms and moths, in the root of the water fern, in the seed husks of the sunflower and the Caledonian pine, within young oak shoots or the stem of the horsetail; and in the creations of mankind, in the pyramids of Egypt and the mausoleum of Augustus as in the garden of King Solomon, which was planted with mathematical precision with pomegranate trees and white lilies. Examples might be multiplied without end, says Browne, and one might demonstrate ad infinitum the elegant geometrical designs of Nature; however - thus, with a fine turn of phrase and image, he concludes his treatise - the constellation of the Hyades, the Quincunx of Heaven, is already sinking beneath the horizon, and so 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our waking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep; making cables of cobwebs and wildernesses of handsome groves." (pp. 19-21)
Chapter 2.1: Cantley II
It is the mood for: "Save for the odd solitary cottage there is nothing to be seen but the grass and the rippling reeds, one or two sunken willows, and some ruined conical brick buildings, like relics of an extinct civilization."
"It was on a grey, overcast day in August 1992 that I traveled down to the coast in one of the old diesel trains, grimed with oil and soot up to the windows, which ran from Norwich to Lowestoft at that time. The few passengers that there were sat in the half-light on the threadbare seats, all of them facing the engine and as far away from each other as they could be, and so silent, that not a word might have passed their lips in the whole of their lives. Most of the time the carriage, pitching about unsteadily on, the track, was merely coasting along, since there is an almost unbroken gentle decline towards the sea; at intervals, though, when the gears engaged with a jolt that rocked the entire framework, the grinding of cogwheels could be heard for a while, till, with a more even pounding, the onward roll resumed, past the back gardens, allotments, rubbish dumps and factory yards to the east of the city and out into the marshes beyond. Through Brundall, Buckenham and Cantley, where, at the end of a straight roadway, a sugar-beet refinery with a belching smokestack sits in a green field like a steamer at a wharf, the line follows the River Yare, till at Reedham it crosses the water and, in a wide curve, enters the vast flatland that stretches southeast down to the sea. Save for the odd solitary cottage there is nothing to be seen but the grass and the rippling reeds, one or two sunken willows, and some ruined conical brick buildings, like relics of an extinct civilization." (pp. 29-30)
Chapter 2.2: Somerleyton
"The intoxicating scent of linden blossom is wafted up from the great avenue. Below, you see the steep roofs tiled with dark blue slate, and in the snow-white glow from the shimmering glasshouses the level blackness of the lawns. Further off in the park drift the shadows of Lebanese cedars; in the deer enclosure, the wary animals keep one eye open in their sleep; and beyond the furthermost perimeter, away toward the horizon, the marshes extend and the sails of the mills are turning in the wind." (p. 35)
Chapter 2.3: In the Heart of the Dark Continent
"The stuffed polar bear in the entrance hall stands over three yards tall. With its yellowish and moth-eaten fur, it resembles a ghost bowed by sorrows. There are indeed moments, as one passes through the rooms open to the public at Somerleyton, when one is not quite sure whether one is in a country house in Suffolk or some kind of no-man's-land, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean or in the heart of the dark continent. Nor can one readily say which decade or century it is, for many ages are superimposed here and coexist." (p. 36)
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Chapter 3.1: Within Its Walls
A 'cinematic padding' for a passing by of Blundeston Prison.
"After I had taken my leave of William Hazel I walked for a good hour along the country road from Somerleyton to Lowestoft, passing Blundeston prison, which rises out of the flatland like a fortified town and keeps within its walls twelve-hundred inmates at any one time." (p. 40)
Chapter 3.2: Vault of the Sky
I had long left the beach fishermen behind me when, in the early afternoon, I reached Benacre Broad, a lake of brackish water beyond a bank of shingle halfway between Lowestoft and Southwold. The lake is encircled by deciduous woodland that is now dying, owing to the steady erosion of the coastline by the sea. Doubtless it is only a matter of time before one stormy night the shingle bank is broken, and the appearance of the entire area changes. But that day, as I sat on the tranquil shore, it was possible to believe one was gazing into eternity. The veils of mist that drifted inland that morning had cleared, the vault of the sky was empty and blue, not the slightest breeze was stirring, the trees looked painted, and not a single bird flew across the velvet-brown water. It was as if the world were under a bell jar, until great cumulus clouds brewed up out of the west casting a grey shadow upon the earth." (p. 59)
Chapter 3.3: Time in the World
"Far off in front of me lay Southwold, a cluster of distant buildings, clumps of trees, and a snow-white lighthouse, beneath the dark sky. Before I reached the town, the first drops of rain were falling. I turned to look back down the deserted stretch I had come by, and could no longer have said whether I had really seen the pale sea monster at the foot of the Covehithe Cliffs or whether I had imagined it." (p. 69)
Chapter 4.1: Lighthouse IV
"The rain clouds had dispersed when, after dinner, I took my first walk around the streets and lanes of the town. Darkness falling, and only the lighthouse with its shining glass cabin still the last luminous rays that came in from the western horizon." (p. 75)
Chapter 4.2: Three Pink Clouds Against a Turquoise Sky
"For a while, the topmost summit regions of this massif, dark as ink, glistened like the ice fields of the Caucasus, and as I watched the glare fade I remembered that years before, in a dream, I had once walked the entire length of a mountain range just as remote and just as unfamiliar. It must have been a distance of a thousand miles or more, through ravines, gorges and valleys, across ridges, slopes, and drifts, along the edges of great forests, over wastes of rock, shale and snow. And I recalled that in my dream, once I had reached the end of my journey, I looked back, and that it was six o'clock in the evening. The jagged peaks of the mountains I had left behind rose in almost fearful silhouette against a turquoise sky in which two or three pink clouds drifted...." (p. 79)
Chapter 4.2: Three Pink Clouds Against a Turquoise Sky (w/Female Narr.)
Chapter 4.3: Sailors' Reading Room
The piano part cycles around the circle of fourths, through third and first inversions:
C-C/Bb-F/A
F-F/Eb-Bb/D
Bb-Bb/Ab-Eb/G
Eb-Eb/Db-Ab/C
Ab-Ab/Gb-Db/F
Db-Db/Cb-Gb/Bb
F#-F#/E-B/D#
B-B/A-E/G#
E-E/D-A/C#
A-A/G-D/F#
D-D/C-G/B
Turnaround: (G-G/F-C/E)
"The Reading Room is thus almost always deserted but for one or two of the surviving fishermen and seafarers sitting in silence in the armchairs, whiling the hours away. Sometimes, in the evenings, they play a game of pool in the back room. Apart from the muffled sound of the sea and the clicking of the balls there is nothing to be heard then, except perhaps, from time to time, the slight scratching noise made by a player priming his cue and the short puff when he blows off the chalk. Whenever I am in Southwold, the Sailors' Reading Room is by far my favourite haunt. It is better than anywhere else for reading, writing letters, following one's thoughts, or in the long winter months simply looking out at the stormy sea as it crashes on the promenade." (p. 93)
Chapter 5.1: The Opening of the Congo
"...after four weeks at sea, Korzeniowski at last reached the Congo, one of those remote destinations he had dreamt of as a child. At that time the Congo had been but a white patch on the map of Africa over which he had often pored for hours, reciting the colourful names. Little was marked in the interior of this part of the world, no railway lines, no roads, no towns, and, as cartographers would often embellish such empty spaces with drawings of exotic beasts, a roaring lion or a crocodile with gaping jaws, they had rendered the Congo, of which they knew only that it was a river measuring thousands of miles from its source to the sea, as a snake coiling through the blank, uncharted land. Since then, of course, detail had been added to the map. The white patch had become a place of darkness. And the fact is that in the entire history of colonialism, most of it not yet written, there is scarcely a darker chapter than the one termed The Opening of the Congo.(pp. 117-118)
Chapter 6.1: Dragon Throne
"...The bridge over the Blyth was built in 1875 for a narrow-gauge railway that linked Halesworth and Southwold. According to local historians, the train that ran on it had originally been built for the Emperor of China...." (p. 137)
Chapter 6.2: Nanking Silk
Chapter 7.1: The Pines
"In 1879, more dead than alive following a nervous attack, Swinburne was taken in a four-wheeler to Putney Hill in south-west London, and there, at number 2, The Pines, a modest suburban townhouse the two bachelors lived henceforth, carefully avoiding the least excitement...." (pp. 163-165)
Chapter 7.2: The Deepest Purple
"My way from Dunwich took me at first by the ruins of the GreyFriars' monastery, through a number of fields, and then to an overgrown scrubland where stunted pines, birches and rampant gorse grew so densely that the going was very hard. I was beginning to think of turning back when all of a sudden the heath opened out in front of me. Shading from pale lilac to deepest purple, it stretched away westward, with a white track curving gently through its midst. Lost in the thoughts that went round in my head incessantly, and numbed by this crazed flowering, I stuck to the sandy path until to my astonishment, not to say horror, I found myself back again at the same tangled thicket from which I had emerged about an hour before, or, as it now seemed to me, in some distant past." (p. 171)
Chapter 8.1: The Scandal
"From 1860, FitzGerald spent a large part of his time either by the sea or on board the ocean-going yacht he had built and named Scandal. From Woodbridge he would sail down the Deben and up the coast to Lowestoft, where he hired his crew from among the herring fishers, all the time looking for a face that reminded him of William Browne. FitzGerald sailed far out into the German Ocean, and, just as he had always refused to dress for particular occasions, so, instead of donning one of the newly fashionable yachting outfits, he would wear an old frock coat and a top hat tied fast. The sole concession he made to the stylish appearance expected of a yachtsman was the long white feather boa which he reportedly liked to sport on deck and which fluttered behind him in the breeze, visible at a good distance. In the late summer of 1863, FitzGerald decided to cross to Holland in the Scandal in order to see the portrait of the young Louis Trip, painted by Ferdinand Bol in 1652, which was in the museum in The Hague. Upon arrival in Rotterdam, his traveling companion, one George Manby of Woodbridge, persuaded him to view the great seaport first." (p. 204)
Chapter 8.1: The Scandal (Ambience)
Chapter 8.2: Defunct Machinery (Orford Ness)
"...but the closer I came to these ruins, the more any notion of a mysterious isle of the dead receded, and the more I imagined myself amidst the remains of our own civilization after its extinction in some future catastrophe. To me too, as for some latter-day stranger ignorant of the nature of our society wandering about among 'heaps of scrap metal and defunct machinery, the beings who had once lived and worked here were an enigma, as was the purpose of the primitive contraptions and fittings inside the bunkers, the iron rails under the ceilings, the hooks on the still partially tiled walls, the shower heads the size of plates, the ramps and the soakaways. Where and in what time I truly was that day at Orford Ness I cannot say, even now as I write these words. All I do know is that I finally walked along the raised embankment from the Chinese Wall Bridge past the old pump house towards the landing stage, to my left in the fading fields a collection of black Nissen huts, and to my right, across the river, the mainland..." (pp. 230-237)
Chapter 8.3: Doggerland
"From a distance, the concrete shells, shored up with stones, in which for most of my lifetime hundreds of boffins had been at work devising new weapons systems, looked (probably because of their odd conical shape) like the tumuli in which the mighty and powerful were buried in prehistoric times with all their tools and utensils, silver and gold. My sense of being on ground intended for purposes transcending the profane was heightened by a number of buildings that resembled temples or pagodas, which seemed quite out of place in these military installations. But the closer I came to these ruins, the more any notion of a mysterious isle of the dead receded, and the more I imagined myself amidst the remains of our own civilization after its extinction in some future catastrophe....As I was sitting on "the breakwater waiting for the ferryman, the evening sun emerged from behind the clouds, bathing in its light the far-reaching arc of the seashore. The tide was advancing up the river, the water was shining like tinplate, and from the radio masts high above the marshes came an even, scarcely audible hum." (pp. 235-237)
Chapter 9.1: Lebanese Cedars
"...one day, when they have grown, they will give shade to me, and look after me in my old age much as I looked after them in their youth. I feel a bond unites me with these trees; I write sonnets, elegies, and odes to them; they are like children, I know them all by name, and my only desire is that I should end my days amongst them...."The Lebanese cedar which I am leaning against, unaware still of the woeful events that were to come, is one of the trees that were planted when the park was laid out, and most of which, as I have said, have already disappeared." (263-264)
Chapter 10.1: Mourning Silk/Black Mantua
"And finally, Maundy Thursday, the 13th of April 1995, was also the day on which Clara's father, shortly after being taken to hospital in Coburg, departed this life. Now, as I write, and think once more of our history, which is but a long account of calamities, it occurs to me that at one time the only acceptable expression of profound grief, for ladies of the upper classes, was to wear heavy robes of black silk taffeta or black crepe de chine. Thus at Queen Victoria's funeral, for example, the Duchess of Teck allegedly made her appearance in what contemporary fashion magazines described as a breathtaking gown with billowing veils, all of black Mantua silk of which the Norwich silk weavers Willett & Nephew, just before the firm closed down for good, had created, uniquely for this occasion, and in order to demonstrate their unsurpassed skills in the manufacture of mourning silks..."
Saturn (Ring) Videos
Three or four miles south of Lowestoft the coastline curves gently into the land...(p. 51 et seq.)
The G ring was discovered by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1980. It is extremely thin, but unlike the E ring it is probably made of "macroscopic" particles (that is, particles that you can see without a microscope). Consequently it would be much more dangerous for a spacecraft to fly through the G ring than through the E ring. Cassini has discovered that the G ring contains “arcs,” regions of denser ring material.
We enter the ring system at the E Ring (Norwich).
The E ring was first discovered telescopically in 1967, and its presence was confirmed by the Pioneer 11 flyby in 1979. It is a thick disk of very fine icy or dusty material, with the individual particles only one micron (a millionth of a meter) across. Five of Saturn's seven largest moons are embedded within it: Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea. Cassini has discovered that active vents on Enceladus’ south pole are the source of the material in the E ring. The vents produce tiny particles of water ice, and the motions of the moons and magnetic field of Saturn spread the material out from Enceladus into a broad doughnut around Saturn.
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