One Earth, One People, One Love from Sun Rings

In the 2002 work Sun Rings, the wonders of technology meet the expansive and compassionate imagination of world-renowned composer Terry Riley, bringing the music of the spheres to life for this new millennium. The evening-length composition includes sounds harvested from our solar system—the crackling of solar winds, the whistling of deep-space lightning, and other cosmic events—which create auditory landscapes triggered by Kronos using an interactive computer. This interplanetary musical story unfolds in a visual environment of breathtaking imagery gathered by NASA spacecraft and prepared for the project by Kronos in collaboration with the eminent visual designer Willie Williams.

Given the literally galactic scope of Sun Rings, it is perhaps a touch ironic that the seeds of the project lay in a cardboard box in the University of Iowa physics department. Inside that box rested a store of audio-cassette tapes of cosmic phenomena recorded over some 40 years by Iowa’s Dr. Donald Gurnett. The esteemed plasma physicist affectionately refers to these extraterrestrial sounds as “whistlers,” because, as he told the Los Angeles Times, when lightning discharges in the plasma of space, “It’s like the electrons get together and whistle.”

Like one of these bolts from the heavens—if a bit slower-paced—the Sun Rings project was born through a kind of chain reaction. From Dr. Gurnett, the story moves to Bertram Ulrich, curator of the NASA Art Program. Long intrigued by Gurnett’s “whistlers” and a devoted fan of Kronos, Ulrich offered Kronos a commission to turn these seemingly random tones from outer space into music. Kronos’ David Harrington, for his part, turned to longtime Kronos collaborator Terry Riley—the California-based father of Minimalism, consummate uniter of musical traditions and innovations, and deep well of spirituality in sound—who agreed to serve as the project’s composer. (As a historical note, in what is either a manifestation of Karma or a happy coincidence for the Sun Rings project, Riley’s very first composition for Kronos was entitled Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector.)

On his approach to bringing together the music of Kronos and the sounds of outer space, Riley notes, “The ‘spacescapes’ that comprise Sun Rings…were written as separate musical atmospheres, with the intention to let the sounds of space influence the string quartet writing and then to let there be an interplay between live ‘string’ and recorded ‘space’ sound. In some movements the intention was to place the quartet in such a way that it felt like they were traveling through spatial atmospheres as a symbolic representation of the wanderings of space probes Voyager and Galileo as they moved through what must have been the quite incredible atmospheres of our solar system. In some cases, fragments of melody that I observed in these sounds became the basis for themes that were developed in the quartet writing.”

In exploring the musical possibilities for the piece, Riley and Harrington paid visits to Gurnett at Iowa and to Cape Canaveral, where they observed the workings of NASA in person, enthusiastically taking in a Space Shuttle launch while they were there. Despite this promising start, however, the project was nearly de-railed by the tragic events of September 11, 2001, after which all parties concerned questioned Sun Rings’ relevance in the wake of the terrorist attacks and the impending war in Afghanistan.

At this point, the Sun Rings chain reaction surprisingly continued, with a new and vital link. As the L.A. Times put it: “Riley heard poet and novelist Alice Walker on the radio talking about how she had made up a September 11 mantra—‘One Earth, One People, One Love.’ It suddenly occurred to him that contemplating outer space could be a way to put the problems on Earth into perspective.” As Riley told the Times, the concept of humanity’s relationship to outer space also took on a spiritual dimension for him: “I thought about a prayer central that would be like a big operating system up there that funnels all the prayers from different people.”

Alice Walker’s mantra not only gave Riley the inspiration to continue—it also provided a title and focal point for Sun Rings’ concluding movement, the excerpt performed by Kronos in the present program. Furthermore, the sound of Walker’s voice intoning the words “One Earth, One People, One Love” became an integral component of the movement itself.

As David Harrington points out, the prayerful, even elegiac quality of Riley’s writing in One Earth, One People, One Love grows naturally from the composer’s previous work with Kronos. “The sonics are directly involved with—an extension of—the Cortejo Fúnebre en el Monte Diablo from the Requiem for Adam,” Harrington says. “You can hear the Tibetan bell tolling on every downbeat.”

As Riley describes his fully realized, post-September 11 conception of Sun Rings: “This work is largely about humans as they reach out from Earth to gain an awareness of their solar system neighborhood….Space is surely the realm of dreams and imagination and a fertile feeding ground for poets and musicians. Ancient astrologers were aware of the significant influences of planetary movements on our lives. I feel these influences are somehow responsible for this amazing collaboration which has been so enthusiastically undertaken by all the participants responsible for its outcome. Do the stars welcome us into their realms? I think so or we would not have made it this far. Do they wish us to come in Peace? I am sure of it.”

Echoing the sentiment of One Earth, One People, One Love, Riley adds, “If only we will let the stars mirror back to us the big picture of the Universe and the tiny precious speck of it we inhabit that we call Earth, maybe we will be given the humility and insight to love and appreciate all life and living forms wherever our journeys take us.”

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