sun-centered (2022) 25'

program note

A simple question reimagines the universe. The person who asks it is imprisoned, just for asking it. This particular person is Galileo, but it could be any number of others, whose pursuit of knowledge leads them beyond the boundaries of their time and place.

I wrote my piece sun-centered at the request of Peter Phillips, the founder and conductor of the renowned ensemble The Tallis Scholars. Peter asked me specifically to write a piece that could coexist on a program with Antoine Brumel’s monumental Missa “Et ecce terræ motus” – a mass for 12 voices that gets its name from being based on a scrap of chant whose text means ‘and the earth moved.’ This scrap of text immediately reminded me of Galileo’s trial for the blasphemy of proving the earth revolves around the sun, which seemed to contradict the Bible. After his conviction he is supposed to have muttered under his breath E pur si muove – ‘and yet it moves.’ Most likely, Galileo never actually said this! But the connection between the two texts got me thinking, about the movement of the earth, about the pricelessness of human knowledge, and about the perils of rejecting it.Why is it that we are so resistant to new ideas that challenge the ones we already know? On one level this is a philosophical question, and two of the texts I set in sun-centered come from my rewriting of basic philosophy texts by Plato and byFrancis Bacon. But of course it is also a political question – we base our society on ideas and values we think we share with each other. If we aren’t able to grow together, in what we know and what we believe, it becomes impossible for us to build anything new. Or perhaps even to build anything together, at all.sun-centered is dedicated to the memory of Louis Andriessen, with whom I spent many hours and many years discussing philosophy and politics, and everything else.

sun-centered was commissioned for the Tallis Scholars by Cal Performances, Carnegie Hall Corporation, Concertgebouw Bruges (Belgium), Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,Stanford Live, and Moss Arts Center, Virginia Tech.

Libretto

sun-centered
words and music by david lang

1. the truths we know
words by david lang, after galileo

some years ago, as your serene highness well knows
I saw many things in the heavens that had never been seen before the novelty of these things stirred up against me
a large number of opponents
as if I had placed these things in the sky
with my own hands
more devoted to their own opinions than to the truth
they sought to deny and disprove these new things
which their own senses would have demonstrated to them
if they had only cared to see for themselves
the passage of time has revealed to everyone
the truths that I uncovered
those who were open to science were persuaded
as soon as they received my message
but some possess some strange interest in remaining hostile
not just toward the things in question
but also toward their discoverer
they know I hold the sun to be placed motionless
in the center of the universe
while the earth revolves around the sun
the reason they condemn the truth
that the earth moves and the sun stands still
is that in many places in the bible
one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still
but nature cannot be stopped
nature cannot be changed
nature cannot transgress the laws imposed upon it
nature cannot care whether its hidden reasons
are understandable to us
god is not any less revealed in nature’s actions
than in any sacred writing
I do not believe that the same god who has endowed us
with senses, with reason and with intellect
has intended us to forego their use
the truths we know are very few
compared with those we do not know
we cannot be satisfied with those opinions
that have become common
we cannot be satisfied with those opinions
that please other people best
it is not in our power to make things true or false this belongs to their own nature and to the facts to their own nature and to the truth
over which no one has power

2. we find it hard
words by david lang, after francis bacon

we find it hard to believe anything
that doesn’t put us in the center of the universe
it is our nature to measure everything against ourselves even if that makes us into mirrors
that distort and disfigure what they see
we find it hard to believe anything
that goes against anything that we already know that goes against the authority acquired
by those we reverence and admire
even if that makes us variable and confused
as if actuated by chance
we find it hard to believe anything
that needs to be told to us in words
words need to be defined
they force and overrule our understanding
they lead us into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies
we find it hard to believe anything
that goes against the dogmas we have learned
we play our parts in their fictitious and theatrical worlds which by tradition, credulity and negligence
have come to be received
we believe the things that make us feel
that there is order in the world
we believe the things that make us feel
support for all the things that we already believe we believe the things that we perceive
with our own senses
we believe the things that make us feel that we will live forever
we believe the things we wish were true

3. hymn to the sun
words by david lang, after psalm 19:6

the sun’s rising is from one end of the heavens the sun rises at one end of the heavens
there is nothing hidden from its heat
nothing is hidden from its heat
nothing is deprived of its warmth nothing hides from its heat nothing can hide from its heat nothing can escape its heat
it travels all the way across the sky
it starts at one end of the sky
its rising is from the end of the heavens
its rising is from one end of the heavens
its rising is from one end of heaven
its circuit is from one end of the sky to the other
it rises from one end of the heavens
it rises at one end of the heavens
it emerges from the distant horizon
it circles around to the other
his going out is from the end of heaven,
his going forth is from the extremity of heaven
his going forth is from the end of the heavens
his going forth is from the end of the heaven
his circuit to its ends
from the end of the heavens is his going out
and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof
and there is nothing hidden from its heat
and there is no one that can hide himself from his heat
and runs its circuit to the other
and nothing is hid from his heat
and nothing is hidden from its heat
and no one shall be hidden from his heat
and makes its circuit to the other
and makes him recline upon the ends of the heavens and its circuit to the other end of them
and its circuit to the other end
and its circuit to the end of them
and his revolution is to their ends
and his revolution is unto their ends
and his circuit unto the ends of it
and his circuit to the other end of heaven
and his circuit even to the end thereof
and goes from one end of the sky to the other
and goes across to the other
and from the ends of the heavens he brings him out and follows its course to the other end
and circles to their other end

4. the republic
words by david lang, after plato

we are here, in the darkness
we are here, in the dark
we have lived here, in the dark, forever
we are in chains
we have always been in chains
we cannot move
we have never moved
we cannot see what is behind us
we have never seen what is behind us
we cannot see what is beside us
we have never seen what is beside us
we can only see what is in front of us
we see the shadows of things, as they pass by they flicker on the wall before us
they are all that we can see
they are all that we have ever seen
we watch these things as they pass by
we hear these things as they pass by
we name these things as they pass by
this is our world, our only world, our whole world this is our truth, our only truth, our whole truth this is everything we know
this is everything that we have ever known
and we have always known it
if one of us were forced to leave
if one of us were forced to see what we cannot
to go where we cannot
and then return to tell us things that we don’t know to tell us stories
about the things we’ve never seen
a star, a moon, a sun
would we believe it?
we tell ourselves we would

5. and yet it moves
words by david lang, after galileo

and yet it moves