Robbert Dijkgraaf and Pia de Jong (E)
Abbreviations (PDF)
Boosey & Hawkes
We are surrounded by mystery. As we go about our lives we seldom pause to consider the trillions of celestial bodies that spread out in space on an unimaginable scale. We have named this mysterious expanse “the universe.” We had to call it something. Mysterium, a work for chorus and electronics, is the result of an unusual collaboration between a composer, a physicist, and a writer, that explores the connection between the large and the small, between each of us and the universe. A physicist examines the objective world, while a writer examines the subjective world within. Mysterium captures the realm where these two worlds meet. The universe created us, but then we invented the universe.
The text for Mysterium was created by the renowned Dutch physicist, Robbert Dijkgraaf and his wife, Pia de Jong, a prominent novelist and memoirist. Their two texts are interwoven. Dijkgraaf’s text presents some of the tenets of modern cosmology: the farther out in space we look, the further back in time we see; the universe would not exist if it were not for a fundamental randomness; the elements of our bodies are made from stardust. De Jong’s text by comparison is personal and small-scale. It presents a single personal moment of reflection. She is unpacking a box after their move to America and finds a photograph of when the two of them had just met. It takes her back in time. She thinks about how random things are. If she had not by chance met Robbert that evening, she would not be here unpacking this box in another country. She recalls what Robbert has told her about the fundamental randomness of the world. She has an urge to write her thoughts down.
In the night sky we can see the stars, but there’s much more out there we can’t see. In the 1960’s scientists uncovered a surprising phenomenon: the earth was surrounded by a faint radiation coming from all directions. It became apparent that this radiation was in fact the remnants of light released just after the universe began. This faint signal was in fact a blueprint for the universe. In Mysterium this radiation, known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), has been converted into sound waves, a gentle white noise with subtle variations. These electronic sounds surround the chorus, making the inaudible audible.
—Sebastian Currier