I Salute Admiral FitzRoy – for 30th April

 

FitzRoy's grave at All Saint's, Upper Norwood (nr. Crystal Palace)

I have the deepest respect for ‘Captain FitzRoy’, whose anniversary – of death by his own hand – was on 30^th April (I’m a few days late due to a big family wedding).

An absolute aristocrat (the Fitzroy name comes as being a direct descendant of the ‘Merry Monarch’ at his merriest), he cared deeply, as second Governor of New Zealand,  for the indigenous Maori during a rapacious colonial period - and was sacked as a result. In the navy from 12, he was appointed temporary commander of HMS Beagle at 23 as a result of the madness and suicide of Captain Stokes, and had another suicide, by throat-slitting, in his family. So very wise to take along a gentleman companion on Beagle’s second voyage to keep him sane, on a ship refitted at his own expense (he kept doing that). His friend Beaufort (inventor of the ‘Force 10’ scale) came up with some suggestions. He got his second choice, Charles Darwin, and – fatefully – thrust a copy of Charles Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’ into 22yr old Charles' hands, thereby giving Darwin a vision of Deep Time (in a way, a bit like the Deep Time I am proposing for the Amity Project, although I only need 60 Million Years).

You’d think that giving Darwin his big, lucky break (again, own expense) would be enough for fame – and indeed there’s plenty more on this aspect, including his brave, principled rejection of Darwin later (including brandishing a bible at the famed Oxford Debate of 1860), and indeed his later reconciliation with Darwin (though not with evolution). But he had to continue his noblesse-oblige-from-own-pocket by founding the Met. Office and inventing Weather Forecasting (including the very term). Perhaps inspired by Beaufort systematising wind-speeds, and with the new technology of barometers and telegraph, his can-do entrepreneurialism led to the first ever weather forecast of 31/7/1861 in his own hand, which was published in the Times. His forecasts saved the lives of many ordinary sailors.

You can tell this is going to end badly. He’d betrayed God (by being Darwin’s unwitting stooge), lost his colonial job, lost his family fortune (died effectively broke), and then the trolling started. Yes, they had trolls before the internet. We used to call such newspaper letter-writers as ‘Angry of Tunbridge Wells, but the trolls included scientists who apparently thought that no forecast was preferrable to an imprecise one. From the Met. Office site:

“The constant criticism took a severe toll on FitzRoy's health and his frequent absence from the office can be traced through the increasingly sporadic presence of his handwriting in the weather reports. His final entry was written on 20th March 1865, just a few weeks before he took his own life on 30th April 1865”.

It’s rather horrible to think of a man – such a great and principled figure - haunted by those earlier suicides and visions of razor-blades, and being inevitably driven into the depression where he would follow their example.

Here’s a small example of my musical write-up mentioning his first interaction with Darwin. I had long intended to pay my respects at his grave, which I was luckily able to do while visiting family close to St Margaret / All Saints, Norwood (near Crystal Palace) recently. The grave was apparently renovated by the Met. Office in 1981 and the strange (Fuegian?) plant has grown since then. I enjoyed popping into ‘his’ church and testing the acoustics with Fr. Antonio, vicar-in-charge, who supplied interesting chat and directed me to FitzRoy’s (very modest) end-of-terrace two hundred meters down Church Road (with a green plaque).

A bit of recitative within the fugato 'Shooting, Dogs & Rat-catching'

Picture credits:

FitzRoy's grave: David F. Gahan

Musical extract: David F .Gahan

When the Old Man Died, 19th April

 

And he had a tin ear...

You’d think by the photo above that he was never young, but a scurrilous lecture by Prof. Mark Pallen shows what he got up to when he was a beardless youth.  That was given at Mark’s ‘Darwin Day 2020’ event; I got to give a talk at this year’s event on the subject ‘Darwin, DNAand Music’. More revelations about what Darwin got up to as a youth can be seen in this excellent skit by Prof. Pavel Borodin’s wonderful students at the Centre for Cytology and Genetics, University of Novosibirsk. Wow, Charlie was young once! And get a load of the marvellous intro song by Suzi Quatro, written around the 100^th anniversary of him popping his clogs, I can almost hear him humming along.

Yes, all good things come to an end and 19^th April 1882 was the end of that particular 3 Billion year-old twig of the Tree of Life (his beautiful image of all our connection). On 10^th March I posted an extract from ‘Three Soliloquies’, an arc of extracts from his life and travels starting with ‘The Gloriesof the Vegetation of the Tropics’, from ‘Voyage of the Beagle’. That was the young Darwin. The third section is ‘A Man Looks Forwards and Backwards’ (with a slight edit-out for musical reasons) and you can listen to an extract here. I’d love to get this recorded as it’s ready-to-go and ‘approved’ by a professional singer and classical guitarist, but at present is only in rendition form. I’m on the look-out for concert promoters who fancy a bit of serious baritone/guitar combo. So in the meantime, you can be amongst the first to sing it, if you follow the words below, from ‘Autobiography’

Extract of baritone / c. guitar aria, David F. Gahan

"A man (on the other hand) looks forwards and backwards, and compares his various feelings, desires and recollections. He then finds, in accordance with the verdict of all the wisest men that the highest satisfaction is derived from following (certain impulses, namely) the social instincts..." 

This is an older Darwin, reflecting on life and what really matters. We leave him ascending the holy mountain - not of Sion, but of Science.

Picture credits:

Darwin College publicity for ‘The Darwins & Music’

Music extract copyright David. F. Gahan

Happy Easter, Librarian!

 

Mysterious Message, left by the perpetrator

A remorseful thief repented last Easter (2022) and made amends. Whatever selfish urges which prompted them to plunder Cambridge University Library, appropriating for personal pleasure part of our common historical patrimony, was expiated in an act of remorse and restitution. Wow! - one doesn’t usually get to use words like those in a blog dedicated to science. But my guess is that the perpetrator was probably steeped in such language – it was Cambridge after all, and the Easter message is a bit tell-tale.

And a great joy it was to anyone interested in the culture and history of science! (To hard scientists, it’s the idea, not the original physical manifestation in ink and paper, that’s the thing.) The story is well told here and the joy that all-manner-of-things-were-wellis communicated in a video interview by Chief Librarian Dr Jessica Gardner. The timing was also a marvel, being in the final year of the Darwin Correspondence Project, a titanic effort to put 15,000 items of correspondence on line (I used it today!).

And such was that joy that, with a little persuading and ideation with a young historian of science academic at Darwin College, Edwin Rose, that the idea of a celebratory concert was born, including my string quartet on Darwinian themes. CUL via the Darwin Correspondence Project stumped a little money which gave rise to the concert which began this blog. It is sanely difficult to get new music programmed /performed from an unusual source. Sanely? Yes, because of the vast back-catalogue, and perfectly proper (albeit mean) funding/support structures for contemporary professional composers. So, usually, no chance to get music like this performed.

The concert, superbly programmed by Francis Knights, took place on 29^th October 2022. It was a great chance to visit the exhibition of DCP at the Library – wonderful, touching examples of the correspondence, including with the fine minds in the British Public at the time such as the Stonemason’s letter (your time will be richly rewarded by clicking on this). The exhibition is now moving to the New York Public Libraries and runs through the summer.

So it is with thanks to the Repentant Thief, CUL and DCP, and Darwin College for the opportunity to visit the exhibition and to have a funded performance of Eyenigma Variations. See Darwiniana tab for photos, quotes and links to the music. I will post more music next time, related to Darwin’s examinations of coral reefs!

And Happy Easter to you; we come from many traditions and all are to be valued, examined, and celebrated.

Glories of the Vegetation of the Tropics: New Music!

 

The Glories of the Vegetation of the Tropics Rise Before My Mind (more vividly than anything else).

It’s about time I posted some more of my own Darwin music to this site, as there’s a full hour of it written. This an excerpt from The Glories of the Vegetation of theTropics, the first  of Three Soliloquies for Baritone and Classical Guitar (see Darwiniana tab for description). These three settings of writings from Voyage of the Beagle and Autobiography represent a personal journey of the mind, in his own words, starting with the sensual delights of the Brazilian jungle.

You’ll have to sing along with it (the guitar and ‘voice’ rendition) as it’s not yet been performed, although I’m convinced there’s a ready audience for Darwin’s words in music. I worked on the guitar settings with a well-known, world-leading classical guitarist who is up for playing in public, as is a leading Oxford baritone for singing. All we’ve got to do is find a suitable concert format. Let me know by comment if you have any ideas!

The clip is quite short, as rendered music is pretty terrible compared to real humans. But the underlying words are also interesting as amongst Darwin's most 'deist', conventionally referring to the God of Nature. Other extracts will be less so. If he wrote it, I’ll set it (edited  musical sense but as lightly as possible). In the meantime, you can sing:

"The primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man...no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.”

The words on the rain-forest are quite poignant given what’s happening to it and were quoted by David Attenborough on (I think: Planet Earth 2) before panning out to reveal a completely razed ex-forest. I think we’re all a little disgusted today (10^th March) to hear that a sixth episode of ‘Wild Isles’ will not been screened withthe rest to avoid the inconvenient truth of the real environmental impoverishment of the British/Irish Isles, because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from UK rightwing politicians and  press.

But, back to beauty:

“In my last walk I stopped again and again, to gaze on these beauties, and endeavoured to fix in my mind (forever) an impression which at the time I knew sooner or later must fail”

A version of what he witnessed from the Beagle Diaries:

29^th Feb 1832

The day has passed delightfully: delight is however a weak term for such transports of pleasure: I have been wandering by myself in a Brazilian forest: amongst the multitude it is hard to say what set of objects is most striking; the general luxuriance of the vegetation bears the victory, the elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers — the glossy green of the foliage, all tend to this end. — A most paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady parts of the wood, the noise from the insects is so loud that in the evening it can be heard even in a vessel anchored several hundred yards from the shore. Yet within the recesses of the forest when in the midst of it a universal stillness appears to reign. To a person fond of natural history such a day as this brings with it pleasure more acute than he ever may again experience.

5^th March 1832:

King & myself started at 9 o’clock for a long naturalizing walk. — Some of the valleys were even more beautiful than any I have yet seen. — There is a wild luxuriance in these spots that is quite enchanting. — One of the great superiorities that Tropical scenery has over European is the wildness even of the cultivated ground. Cocoa Nuts, Bananas, Plantain, Oranges, Papaws are mingled as if by Nature…

(In fact, the ‘primeval forests’ weren’t that undefaced, having been cultivated by the indigenous peoples).

 Picture credit: http://darwinbeagle.blogspot.com/

Happy Birthday to Brian Cox: Who I Hope is Wrong

 

The Glories of the Southern Skies

I just have to say Happy Birthday to physicist and musician, fellow Irksider and also 3^rd o’March baby Brian Cox. That’s probably the end of the resemblance but not bad for an intro. Actually, we share that birthday with WW1 poet Edward Thomas who wrote a rather good poem celebrating the day, so a present for all 3/3ers (inc. my mate Eddie).

I’ve just listened to the first of the new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage Southern Skies recorded in Sydney – the lucky lot. And lots of rubbing-it-in about the ‘Majesty of the Southern Sky’ versus our “arse-end-of-the-galaxy” view from points Northern (Robin Ince on poetic form, there).

Charles Darwin clearly agreed: “Amongst the other most remarkable spectacles, which we have beheld, may be ranked, — the stars of the Southern hemisphere…” (BeagleDiaries). Here’s an image from my setting of those words for chorus/orchestra. I’ll post a clip of the music at a later date.

 

"We Beheld the Stars"

The main reason Brain (typo, but why correct it?), Robin & astrophysicist guests gave for the superiority of the Southern Skies was the view of the Galactic Centre, the star lanes and darker dust lanes between them. And lurking in the middle… “Almost every galaxy has a Super-Massive Black Hole” said Devika Kamath. “I recommend looking at it from a far distance” was sensible advice from Kirsten Banks. A terrible place, by the way, for a galactic meeting place for technologically advanced civilisations. @AstroKirsten gave some nice stories from Australian First Nation star-lore. At one point, she interjected, “You’re right, Brian, but not all the time”.

Fair Enough. One thing where I hope Brian is wrong (or, scientifically speaking, a test could be proposed which may show his conjecture to be wrong) is the following. In another, epoch-defining IMC, episode ‘UFO Special’, broadcast 17/2/20, Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock set up the question with, “If civilisations don’t overlap, we will never meet the aliens.” Brian replied, “The question is how close the nearest civilisation (is at present); I think the answer may be outside the Milky Way and therefore forever inaccessible.”

Thereby giving me a good steer in the right direction for my lock-down project, ‘how an engineer would find the Aliens.’ Rule 1 in engineering is ‘relax the constraints to make the challenge easier’. If you want to find a needle in a haystack, and you have the chance to remove the haystack, you might find the job easier (other things being equal). I’ve written about a better place to look in this blog and in the referenced paper. If you have the time (about 20MY).

But there may be an even better place to look, if you’re a bit impatient. And only those lucky ‘beholders of the Southern Stars’ can gaze up there (but I recommend a Space-based observation, for about a hundred years). Can you spot it in the map above? I will write further about the target at another time.

Happy 3/3:

“Here again (she said) is March the third
And twelve hours singing for the bird
'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six
To half past six, never unheard.” 

Edward Thomas (d. April 1917, Arras)

Picture credits:

Music: “Remarkable Sights” copyright DFG

Eyenigma Variations – Extract on Soundcloud!

Following the marvellous performance of Eyenigma Variations at Darwin College Cambridge on 29^th October by a quartet led by Paul Warburton, I’ve had many requests to hear the piece.  The concert ‘The Darwins and Music’ was a miracle of organisation with so many memorable elements – but too complex for a recording to take place, or to be fair to the musicians who gave their time serving up this wonderful collection of Darwin-related music.

Now Eyenigma has had its public premier, in the company of pieces by Cheryl Frances-Hoade, Haydn, Fanny Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin and Ralph Vaughan-Williams, it’s probably time to put and extract on Soundcloud (‘robot rendition’ directly from the software).  I’ve chosen the smokey ‘Tranquillo’ section through to the frenetic end, with warring codes and a final genetic STOP!  You’ll miss out on the mysterious beginning ‘Morse Codes and Torchbeams’ (flashlights!) and Variations on an anti-evolution hymn, but so soon after hearing flesh-and-blood musicians bring the whole thing to life I haven’t the heart to let the robots play the whole thing.

The Tranquillo is one of my favourite sections.  It was originally a vocal passage setting Darwin’s words describing how the Eye might have come to be, “from one very imperfect and simple” and so gets a very simple and calm melody.  The ‘cello comments on this and then adds the genetic code setting of the Eye protein rhodopsin, eventually rising up the scale – of complexity?  The violent and feroce coda reprises all the themes, but just audio lacks the fun of seeing the quartet really physically attacking the last few bars!

Hopefully if this gets a few hits (and comments!) I’ll add more clips to Soundcloud, including the (rendered) vocal/classical guitar settings “Glories of the Vegetation of the Tropics”, “I Gradually Came to Disbelieve” etc, and maybe some of the larger works.

Picture credit: Roland Deschain