Description

Russell Ward, executive producer

Music can take so many forms.  This album explores the relationship between acoustically produced music created by human beings and CERN LHC subatomic particle generation and decay files from the European Organization for Nuclear Research.  The CERN tracks function here as intermezzi.

For each of these “intermezzi” I have converted the most basic “sonified“ files in the CERN Sounds Library to midi piano and violin tracks using the native instruments in Apple’s LogicProX.  I intend the paired piano-violin tones to represent particle-antiparticle pairs typically produced in the LHC collisions.  I have set the key and tempo globally for each track, in order to better match the music performance movements. I have not altered the relative arrangement of tones within the tracks, meaning that I preserved the original structure of the data.

Tracks on the album alternate between recordings made and previously released by Yarlung Records with the midi tracks, which my friend Brian L. Ruhe and I recorded from a high-resolution audiophile playback system I designed and built for projects like this. Special thanks to Yarlung’s Martin Chalifour (violin), Joanne Pearce Martin and Bryan Pezzone (piano), Mika Sasaki (piano) and Elinor Frey (cello).  I hope that the patterns in the music you hear performed by these outstanding musicians connect in your mind with the patterns generated by the most elementary known particles in our universe, as captured in their ephemeral dance in CERN’s accelerator complex in Switzerland.

Repertoire includes:

Kaija Saariaho, Sept Papillons Mov 1
CERN Sweep ttH Tracks
Steven Stucky, Musicas Dormidas from Tres Pinturas
CERN Event Monitor part 1
Steven Stucky, Amigos de los Pajaros, from Tres Pinturas
CERN Top Quark Jet, fast
Maurice Ravel, Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major
Mov 3, Perpetuum Mobile
CERN Higgs Jet 2
Max Grafe, Obsidian Liturgy
CERN Higgs Jet 1
Claude Debussy La Plus que Lente, arr. Leon Roques
CERN Top Quark Jet, slow
Igor Stravinsky, Firebird exerpt, arr. Stravinsky & Dushkin, Scherzo
CERN Inner Detector Layers part 1
Sergei Prokofiev, Sonata for solo violin D major, Opus 115, Mov 1, Moderato
CERN Event Monitor part 2
J S Bach, Partita No.1 in B Minor, BWV 1002, arr. Schumann, Sarabande et Double
CERN Sweep ttH Clusters
J S Bach, Partita No.1 in B Minor, BWV 1002, arr. Schumann, Tempo di Bourree et Double
CERN Inner Detector Layers part 2
Kaija Saariaho, Sept Papillons Mov 4

Musicians and composers create symmetry and harmony out of physical matter.  The alchemy of music emerges from the wood body and metal strings of violins and pianos and from the blood, sinews and muscles in human beings.  Like the metaphoric music emerging from CERN’s particle detectors, music originating in our great concert halls comes from matter also.  The five-story Atlas Detector surrounds violinist Martin Chalifour like a concert hall on our album cover.

We titled our album Symmetriā Pario.  The title references the birth of the universe and the birth of particles within the Atlas detector, as well as the creation of music by musicians and physicists alike.  In our definition of the Latin, “Symmetriā Pario” literally means “I give birth to symmetry.”

CERN’s Professor Gianotti writes: “Art is based on very clear, mathematical principles like proportion and harmony.  At the same time, physicists need to be inventive, to have ideas, to have some fantasy.”  With these principles and freedom to interpret in mind, let us enjoy this exploration.

In each case, we offer an interpretation of the music composed and performed by human beings that fits the sequence of events surrounding the generation of particles in high-energy collision experiments, and, later, the formation of particles in the early universe.  We then juxtapose those pieces with transposed sound files representative of actual collision events.

If you enjoy the music on this album and want to hear more from our Yarlung musicians, please visit Martin Chalifour in Walt Disney Concert Hall, Martin Chalifour and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dialoghi and Obsidian.

Thank you!

–Russell Ward, executive producer

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