The Songs of Distant Earth [Excerpt]

The Songs of Distant Earth [Excerpt] It still seemed a miracle that after their art had reached technological perfection, composers of music could find anything new to say. For two thousand years, electronics had given them complete command over every sound audible to the human ear, and it might have been thought that all the possibilities of the medium had been long exhausted. There had, indeed, been about acentury of beepings and twitterings and electroeructations before composers had mastered their now infinite powers and had once again successfully married technology and art. No one had ever surpassed Beethoven or Bach; but some had approached them. To the legions of listeners, the concert was a reminder of things they had never known-things that belonged to Earth alone. The slow beat of mighty bells, climbing like invisible smoke from old cathedral spires; the chant of patient boatmen, in tongues now lost forever, rowing home against the tide in the last light of day; the songs of armies marching into battles that Time had robbed of all their pain and evil; the merged murmur of ten million voices as man’s greatest cities awoke to meet the dawn; the cold dance of the aurora over endless seas of ice; the roar of mighty engines climbing upward on the highway to the stars. All these the listeners heard in the music that came out of the night-the songs of distant Earth, carried across the light-years ... For the concluding item,the producers had selected the last great work in the Arthur C. Clarke Arthur C. Clarke (writer). ”Leslie’s House”. 25, Barnes Place. Colombo 7. Sri Lanka. Excerpted from the book T h h pSong.\ o/Dr.rtanr Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. Copyright @ 1986by Serendih BV. Reprinted by permission of Ballantine Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. LEONARDO, Vol. 20, No. 4, p. 308,1987 symphonic tradition. Written in the years when Thalassa had lost touch with Earth, it was totally new to the audience. Yet its oceanic theme made it peculiarly appropriate to this occasion-and its impact upon the listeners was everything the long-dead composer could have wished. * * * “. .. When I wrote the ‘Lamentation for Atlantis,’ almost thirty years ago, I had no specific images in mind; I was concerned only with emotional reactions, not explicit scenes; I wanted the music to convey a sense of mystery,of sadness-of overwhelming loss. I was not trying to paint a sound-portrait of ruined cities full of fish. But now something strange happens whenever I hear the Lento lugubre-as I am doing in my mind at this very moment ... “It begins at Bar 136,when the series of chords descending to the organ’s lowest register first meets the soprano’s wordless aria, rising higher and higher out of the depths.. . You know, of course, that I based that theme on the songs of the great whales, those mighty minstrels of the sea with whom we made peace too late, too late ... I wrote it for Olga Kondrashin, and no one else could ever sing those passages without electronic backing. . . “When the vocal line begins, it’s as if I’m seeing something that really exists. I’m standing in a great city square, almost as large as St. Marks or St. Peters. All around are half-ruined buildings, like Greek temples, and overturned statues draped with seaweeds, green fronds wavingslowly back and forth. Everything is partly covered by a thick layer of silt. “The square seems empty at first; then I notice something-disrurbing. Don’t ask me why it’salways a surprise, why I’m always seeing it for the first time ... “There’s a low mound in the center of the square, with a pattern of lines radiating from it. I wonder if they are ruined walls, partly buried in the silt. But the arrangement makes no sense; and then I see that the mound is-pulsing. “And a moment later I notice two huge, unblinking eyes staring out at me. “That’s all; nothing happens. Nothing has happened here for six thousand years, since that night when the land barrier gave way and the...