Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855

Raving politics, never at rest—as this poor earth’s pale history runs,

What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of Suns?

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Vastness, 1885

That’s us. That’s home. That’s where we are.

—Carl Sagan, The Lost Lecture, 1994

The Listeners (2019)

an Oratorio

for orchestra, chorus, two soloists, and turntable; on texts by Walt Whitman, William Drummond of Hawthornden, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Carl Sagan, Yesenia Montilla, and Lucille Clifton

Duration: 37:00

Visual Program Notes

Listening to the music of Caroline Shaw can be a somewhat anachronistic experience. As a Baroque violinist and vocalist, she is drawn to Baroque styles and structures in her compositions. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita for 8 Voices has movements titled Allemande, Sarabande, Courante, and Passacaglia. While Shaw may adore the music of J.S. Bach’s time, she incorporates her cosmopolitan musical sensibilities at will into her compositions, creating a sonic world that is at once recognizable and modern.

I have always found Baroque music to be transportive. It is a goto when I feel the need to get lost in the intricacies of its counterpoint and joyousness of its rhythmic fluidity. These are the same qualities that many 20th-century minimalist composers drew upon to create their masterpieces. There’s a complexity hidden in the simplicity that makes this music timeless. As long as humans are listening to music, the work of J.S. Bach will live on. There were three selections of Bach’s music on the Voyager Golden Record attached to the outside of both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes along with recorded greetings in 55 different languages.  

Many agree that the compositional forms codified in the Baroque era represent a high watermark in music history. The music from this time is so revered that entire orchestras exist to duplicate precise details of the performance practices of the era. Strings are fitted with natural gut strings, trumpets are valveless, and personnel are reduced in number. Tunings are lowered to match the pitch center that was acceptable to 18th-century listeners, and harpsichords reign supreme with pianos nowhere to be found. Today’s modern orchestras are much larger and louder than the orchestras of Bach’s time. 

At the time of this writing, Voyager 1 is over 13 billion miles away from Earth, having been launched 42 years ago. It is the farthest human-made object from Earth. Light takes a little more than 20 hours to travel that distance. It has only recently reached interstellar space. Will the Voyager Golden Record ever be listened to? Who will the listeners be?

Caroline Shaw’s latest work is another exploration of a traditional musical form, the oratorio. Many consider the English oratorios of the Baroque era, as exemplified by G.F. Handel’s Messiah, to be the finest examples of the form. The Listeners (2019) is Caroline Shaw’s version of an English oratorio. According to Shaw, the work is a response to the Golden Record carried by both Voyager spacecraft. It was premiered by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale of San Francisco. The libretto consists of poetry from the 17th century through today, sound clips from the Greeting portion of the Golden Record itself, and a recorded segment of Carl Sagan delivering the concluding remarks of his “Lost Lecture” from Cornell in 1994. There are moments of “Vivaldiesque” ostinato as well as full-on orchestral minimalism (Pulsar). Hearing a Baroque Orchestra perform modern minimalist writing was alone worth the experience for this Listener. It’s a work that attempts, like the Golden Record, to encompass all human experience across centuries in one 37’ presentation. It’s an ambitious frame suitable to be classified as an oratorio. Fortunately, this representation of humanity is meant for local Listeners to ponder.