Click here to listen.
Note: This is a compressed stereo reduction from original quad – MP3 256 bps – Dur 7’30”

This piece was composed for the International Year of Astronomy (2009) and for the “Music and Astronomy” conference organized by the Bonporti Conservatory of Trento and Riva del Garda.

In the first Star Trek movie, V’ger (pron. Vyger) is the name given by the Borg to a fictional Voyager 6 intelligent probe, launched from Earth and recovered by them while wandering in outer space. The real Voyager 1 and 2 probes, was launched in the late 70s and destined to get lost in interstellar space, after passing around the outer planets from which they sent us images, but also sounds.

For those wondering how it is possible to find sounds in the vacuum of space, we point out that these are not noises audible by human ears, but waves detectable by the instrumentation placed on the probes. This waves can derive, for example, from the interaction of the solar wind with the planet’s magnetosphere, which releases ionic particles with a vibration frequency that falls within the audible range, or radio-frequency generated by the magnetic fields of the planet and its moons and in this case it is necessary to lower them by several octaves to make them audible.
To create V’ger the aforementioned sounds have been analyzed and resynthesized to make them usable musically, because in reality their evolution takes place in circadian times (hours, sometimes days). Then these sounds have been structured in “chords” based on the average distances of the planets from the sun, and their evolution is governed by Newton’s law (gravitation).

V’ger honors the journeys of the two Voyager probes who have traveled billions of kilometers guided only by gravitation and today are the farthest objects that man has ever built (on September 11 2020, Voyager 1 was approximately 14 billion miles from the sun).
I got my first telescope when I was in junior high. For those who, like me, already as a child used to spend a few nights scanning the sky and were convinced that, in 2000, they could have taken a vacation on Mars as a simple tourist, the advent of the third millennium was a real disappointment. No flying cars. No smart androids to replace us at work. No bases on the Moon and Mars. Aside from the music, missions like those of Voyager and the probes that followed them are the only things that give me the perception of a frontier.

V’ger was composed using AlGen, a computer assisted composition software, created by myself and synthesized in 4 channels using Csound.

Ok. Let’s see some details of the structure. The following image is the V’ger stereogram, with the 4 channels mixed into one (frequencies are on the y-axis and time is on the x-axis).

The  forms in the spectrogram are related to different types of organization of the material on different parameters, all inspired, more or less freely, by objects of near or deep space. Some examples:

• random point clusters (e.g. from 4:00 to 4:30) or sorted (4:30 to 5:00)
• glissati fields, such as more or less rapidly moving objects (2:30 – 3:30)
• high density (0:00 – 0:10) or extremely thin (5:50 – 7:30) material

Frequency structure
The frequency structure is based on the average distance of the planets from the Sun, expressed in astronomical units (AU; average distance Earth – Sun = 1).

These distances are as follows (some values are rounded; real values in brackets):

If you now associate the frequency of one note with the value 1.0 (Earth), it is easy to calculate all the others and find the corresponding notes. If, by hypothesis, the frequency of a Sol (97.993 Hz) is associated with the value 1.0, we have

The notes are written in Anglo-Saxon notation (A = A, B = Si, C = Do, etc.). The next number is the octave. The last is the pitch in cents (100 cents equals a half tone out of tune, so 50 corresponds to 1/4 of a tone, 25 to 1/8).

So, using a system that basically goes back to Kepler, we have an agreement. At this point, however, nothing prevents us from doing the same with the other planets. Measure everything according to an astronomical unit based on Mercury, Venus, Mars, etc. and get other agreements which are as follows:

G  2 +0
F  3 -31
B  3 -14
F# 4 -12
D# 6 +40
D  7 -16
D  8 +38
A# 8 -26

A  1 +31
G  2 +0
C# 3 +17
G# 3 +19
F# 5 -28
E  6 +15
F  7 -31
C  8 +6

D# 1 +14
C# 2 -18
G  2 +0
D  3 +2
C  5 -46
A# 5 -3
B  6 -49
F# 7 -12

G# 0 +12
F# 1 -20
C  2 -2
G  2 +0
F  4 -48
D# 5 -5
D# 6 +49
B  6 -14

B  -2 -41
G# -1 +28
D  0 +46
A  0 +48
G  2 +0
F  3 +43
F# 4 -3
C# 5 +34

C  -2 +16
A# -2 -15
E  -1 +2
B  -1 +4
A  1 -43
G  2 +0
G# 3 -46
D# 4 -9

C  -3 -38
A  -3 +31
D# -2 +49
A# -2 +51
G# 0 +3
F# 1 +46
G  2 +0
D  3 +37

E  -4 +25
D  -3 -6
G# -3 +12 
D# -2 +14
C# 0 -34
B  0 +9
C  2 -37
G  2 +0

To listen to the chords click here.
This series of chords, made more interesting by a different distribution of the notes between the octaves, forms the opening and closing of the piece.