The sounds of space

Welcome to my latest obsession: Sounds from space. I know, I know, space is for all practical purposes a vacuum (unless you're designing an interstellar ramjet) so sound as we know it doesn't exist there. And even if it did in the thin stellar media, we'd need fantastically sensitive microphones to pick up any hint of audio.

Well, I thought so, until I stumbled across the "NASA Space Sounds" video below when it was being shared around the interwebz recently. Instruments aboard Voyagers I and II, as well as several other space probes, recorded an array of electromagnetic signals that, when converted to sound (think of it as running it through a space age amplifier) the result is a strange and eerie ambient sound that is utterly engrossing. To my ear, at least, the pieces are evocative of the non-classical music soundtrack from 201: A Space Odyssey. So that's bonus points right there.

The sequences sampled below are taken from a series of 5 CD put out by Laserlight in 1990 titled "Symphonies of the Planets" as well as an additional volume a few years later titled "Celestial Love Songs." Long out of print, they're quite pricey to purchase second hand. Fortunately, they're readily available as MP3 (as well as other format) downloads online, the only drawback being the file labeling isn't consistent and therefore it's challenging to keep track of individual tracks. And since all data, audio and video released by NASA is public domain, fans of these fascinating ambient sounds may download with a clear conscience that no copyright is being violated.

Alas, in my obsessive research, I've learned that things aren't so cut-and-dried. Yes, NASA does take collected electromagnetic data and convert it into audible sound, but the raw, unvarnished audio doesn't sound all that much like what we hear on the CDs. That's because Laserlight (or Brain/Mind Research, which handled the production) didn't just take the NASA audio and burn it to disc. They ran it through an intergalactic version of the nefarious Auto-Tune, processing it heavily and looping, over-dubbing and sweetening with synthesizers to the point where many of the actual "space sounds" are tenuous at best. In fact, some pieces, such as the samples of "Song of Earth" and "Voices of Earth" in the video above simply do away with the source material entirely and re-orchestrate it. I guess that make it an artistic interpretation of the data rather than an objective representation (which opens up the whole objective/subjective reality can of worms, but I digress...).

What's more, it brings copyright into question. It is clearly established law that what is public domain cannot be subsequently copyrighted (publishers may copyright specific presentations of public domain materials, but not the content itself, which is why you can find free 1920s jazz downloads online, as well as the complete works of Charles Dickens, even though publishers put out new editions every few years). However, derivative works of both copyright and public domain can be copyrighted, but only that which is new and derivative is thus protected, ie the original which is incorporated into the derivation remains in the public domain. In this particular case, I would expect the Brain/Mind Research productions to be fully covered by copyright protection. Being out of print is irrelevant. However (and I'm full of caveats today, aren't I?) their persistent and insistent claims (indeed, the entirety of their marketing and mass appeal) that the audio is direct from NASA, with no claims of alteration on their part would, at least superficially, serve to undermine any copyright protection as, has been pointed out previously, all NASA materials are automatically released to public domain. For Brain/Mind Research to assert their copyright on these works, they would effectively have to admit false advertising, which would significantly diminish the value of said works. It's an interesting academic question, albeit one I doubt anybody is going to bother exploring any time soon.

Authentic or not, I find the interpretations of space sounds interesting and appealing. I'll be keeping an eye on Ebay and the like in case a CD shows up for a bargain price...

Muddle Instead of Music

Today is the anniversary of one of the most infamous reviews in history. In 1936, Dmitri Shostakovich, already a world renowned composer, woke up to read in Pravda that his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk was "music turned deliberately inside out in order that nothing will be reminiscent of classical opera, or have anything in common with symphonic music or with simple and popular musical language accessible to all."



If that didn't tighten Shostakovich's stomach enough, the review goes on to say the score offers "quacks, grunts, and growls" in place of a more traditional operatic language.

At the time "Muddle Instead of Music" was published, Lady Macbeth had been running (and praised) for months, not just in the Soviet Union but abroad--which was another one of Shostakovich's problems. This broadside represented a shift in direction of the government's attitude towards music and its musicians. The nature of the shift can be read in the review itself.

The article attacked the music's slight jazz touches as "nervous, convulsive, and spasmodic." The Soviet regime's response to jazz being the same as Germany's where it was termed degenerate music. With regard to the Soviets, I've seen an Bambi influenced animated film "Someone Else's Voice" that made the same point (collected in the wonderful Animated Soviet Propaganda DVD collection).

Also on the spit was the opera's alleged vulgarity: "The merchant's double bed occupies the the central position on the stage. On this bed all "problems" are solved. In the same coarse,
naturalistic style is shown the death from poisoning and the flogging -
both practically on stage."

So both the modern--read atonal--musical language and the more naturalistic style of the story were objected to. Interestingly, Pravda called this "leftist" but clearly not the right kind of leftism. Shostakovich's opera gets tied to "Meyerholdism", again not a good sign for the composer because the theater director had already had his show trial and was in prison (he'd be executed in 1940).

Finally, in case the composer and readers hadn't gotten the point: "The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, "formalist" attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly."

Shostakovich noted in his memoirs the most ominous thing about the review was that it was unsigned. To him, and presumably to others used to reading the tea leaves, this meant the review stood as an official statement of the Party and by extension directly from Stalin. Shostakovich goes on to describe the immediate personal result: whispers, furtive glances, nervously closed doors.

For musicians in the Soviet Union, Muddle was a signal to tone down experimentation. A union was formed to firmly enforce socialist realism, in this case the view that in the Soviet Union music's purpose of music was solely to uplift the masses (to use their language). I wish I could make a blanket statement that all the work produced under this edict was terrible, but in fact personally, I like a lot of what I've heard. Tikhon Khrennikov, for example, who ran the union for most of its history and whom Shostokovich names as one of his chief tormentors, wrote some cello concertos that are "steaky" to use Elgar's term for a good strong tune.

Meanwhile, Shostakovich, lucky to avoid exile or worse, learned to speak in two voices. His Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad) of 1941, Symphony No. 10 (1905) from 1957 and especially to me Symphony No. 12 (The Year 1917) are all big, completely tonal, and easily accessible works. He also scored films--watch the amusing Cherry Town (1963) on YouTube, for example. At the same time, into the drawer was going the more personal work, usually written for smaller ensembles and more and more relating to Judaism. After the Secret Speech and subsequent thaw under Khruschev, Shostakovich did begin to publish and have some of this work performed, but the overriding theme of his memoirs--Testimony, which I highly recommend--is caution and the exhaustion that came from having to spend the rest of his life nervously watching the shadows.