The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music plus tips for watching Monday’s solar eclipse
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By Jacob Stockinger
This coming Monday, April 8, will see a rare solar eclipse crossing the United States and visible to varying degrees (below) in different locations. In Madison, it will start at 12:50 p.m. CST, peak at 2:05 and end at 3:20.
It got The Ear to thinking about appropriate classical music to listen to.
But some other information seems more important to convey first:
For last-minute tracking of the eclipse and traveling to see it, here are stories from NPR (National Public Radio) and PBS:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-to-watch-the-2024-total-solar-eclipse
And from, MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), here are tips in the form of a Q&A about how to make the most out of viewing the eclipse:
https://news.mit.edu/2024/qa-brian-mernoff-tips-for-viewing-solar-eclipse-0404
NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has some advice about watching the eclipse safely:
https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/safety
If you want to watch the eclipse in real time from a place where a total eclipse — known as totality — will take place, the PBS NewsHour will live-stream it on YouTube. Here is a link, which also allows you to set up a notification starting at noon on Monday for the real-time broadcast:
A solar eclipse is an event that inspired awe and fear. It caused our pre-historic ancestors to beat the ground with sticks and exchange stories about the wrath of the gods.
These days it leads to even more conspiracy theories by more primitive-minded, far-right conspiracy theorists. Here is an an overview from Rolling Stone magazine of the nonsense that is being promulgated by Alex Jones (below, from Getty Images) and other popular science- and fact-deniers.
The Ear looked for some music to capture the feeling of the eclipse — the mystery and awe when it is happening, and the relief when it is over.
He’s pretty sure that on the radio, internet and elsewhere you will hear excerpts from “The Planets” by Gustav Holst; the “Moonlight” Sonata by Beethoven; maybe Haydn’s “Sunrise” string quartet, “Clair de lune” by Debussy; “Morning Mood” from “Peer Gynt Suite Suite” by Edvard Grieg; “Sunrise” from the “Grand Canyon Suite” by Ferde Grofé; the beautiful sunrise opening of the “Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2” by Ravel; and of course the dramatic opening sunrise to “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss, which was made famous in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
But The Ear settled on the “Helios Overture” (in the YouTube video at the bottom) by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen. It is a haunting performance by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the American conductor Alan Gilbert.
Do you have a piece of classical music that you think would be appropriate for watching the eclipse?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Listen to live “eclipse music” during today’s solar eclipse
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is the day a lot of people have been waiting for for a long time.
The United States will experience a solar eclipse (below).
By now you’ve heard enough about not looking directly at the sun because of the severe damage you risk doing to your eyes.
But indirectly you can watch and also hear it unfold from about 11:15 a.m. CDT for three hours. And you can see it and hear about through any number of media, including television, radio and the Internet. Just Google it and take your choice.
What you may not know is that the entire eclipse in the U.S, will be accompanied by the famed and always adventurous Kronos Quartet (below top) playing an ingenious score – which uses the energy from the sun during the eclipse to create notes — written especially for this occasion by the contemporary San Francisco composer Wayne Grim (below bottom) especially for this occasion.
You can hear a sample of Grim’s music for another scientific project at the Exploratorium in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Here are links to the stories on National Public Radio (NPR) and the web, which feature a link to the live-streamed performance from the Exploratorium in San Francisco:
https://www.space.com/37845-kronos-quartet-serenades-total-solar-eclipse.html
And for good measure, here is a link to a story about the first photograph ever taken of a solar eclipse – the one that appears above. The daguerreotype dates from July 28, 1851 and was taken by Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/08/20/behold-the-first-photograph-of-a-solar-eclipse/
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