Space Journey by Bach Elgar Choir
Review by Anar M, Youth Reviewer
A couple nights ago, I went to see a performance called “Space Journey” by the Bach Elgar Choir in Hamilton in collaboration with Mark Bochsler. The show consisted of a series of (relatively) modern choral works accompanying a series of images of outer space put together by Bochsler, including images taken by the new James Webb Space Telescope.
A half-hour presentation by a professor of astrophysics at McMaster University (who is also a member of the Bach Elgar Choir) at the beginning of the performance gave some context: the scale of space; different types of space observation; how colour is constructed in images of space. I particularly liked her description of that last one — essentially, light outside of the visual spectrum is assigned a colour (for example, infrared light might be represented as “red” while X-rays might be “violet”) and those colours are used to represent the spectrum of light emitted by the space object. She also highlighted the importance of looking at infrared radiation as well as visual light (infrared can go through dust clouds and be used to see very distant, and thus very old, stars).
The show itself was stunning. I’m personally a bit of a space nerd, but I think the images would’ve been interesting even to somebody who’s not particularly interested in space. Sunlight creeping across the surface of the moon; the Sun, its surface dotted by bright explosions of light; the surfaces of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; Saturn’s rings and moons; distant galaxies or nebulae. Space is full of startlingly beautiful sights, and this performance really helped to highlight that.
Most of the choral pieces were religious, and a fair number of them were in Latin, but the music was matched to the images it accompanied. The sun, for example, was shown while “Hail Gladdening Light” was sung; the moon while the choir sang “How Sweet the Moonlight Sleeps”; images taken by the Voyager missions during a choral piece called “I am Voyager.”
A particularly interesting aspect of the combination of music and images was the connection drawn between religious concepts and space. There’s definitely a strong connection in our minds between religion and space: objects in space are “celestial bodies” or “heavenly bodies”; part of the Eagle Nebula is called the “pillars of creation.” We tend to imagine God, or gods, far above us, and what’s farther above us than space? By putting religious choral music next to images of deep space, “Space Journey” emphasises and comments on that connection. It’s also interesting to think about how space exploration tries to answer many of the same questions as religion, albeit in a different way: How did the world begin? How will it end? What, if anything, is “out there”?
Overall, “Space Journey” was an imaginative, beautiful, and interesting performance. I, for one, loved it.