Thursday, 20 October 2022

Eyenigma Variations first public performance

 

Eyenigma Variations: first public performance Saturday 29th October 2022 at Darwin College Cambridge

I'm delighted to say that the first public performance of 'Eyenigma Variations' (1.1) will take place at: The Darwins and Music: A Concert (Darwin College), Cambridge University Library as part of and with the support of Cambridge University Libraries exhibition, Darwin in Conversation: The Endlessly Curious Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (Saturday 9 July-Saturday 3 December). 

If you are attending and want to hum along with some of the sections based on Chapter 6, 'Origin of Species' (First Edition), the phrases depicted in music are: 

"Difficulties on the theory"- this becomes an opening rhythm in 'Morse Code': you can mutter along to this in a worried fashion. 

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances [pizzicato] for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. [dance] Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist... [tranquillo]

."..the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection...and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man? [coda]

It's 'music a scientist might write': I hope you like it.

2 comments:

  1. I was at the concert at Darwin College to hear David Gahan’s piece, Eyenigma Variations. I thought it was wonderful to listen too, even though I’m not knowledgeable enough to work out the codes and puzzles in the piece. I do hope it becomes much more generally known. It’s excellent!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Adele - great to have you at this marvelous event with such a great musical programme, and a 200-strong audience!

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