Description
Commissioned by Cantus, “Silver Deity of Secret Night” weaves together mathematics, poetry, and one of the most monumental moments in history, the launch and subsequent Moon landing of Apollo 11. Montagu’s poem,“A Hymn to the Moon,” illuminates an ethereal soundscape that touches the Moon dreamer in all of us, bringing us to the edge of our seats with anticipation. It’s as if we were back in 1969 witnessing this colossal undertaking of humanity seeking to make contact with our closest neighbor in the Universe.
Text
beta, gamma, epsilon, omega, delta, lambda, pi…
Thou silver deity of secret night,
Direct my footsteps through the woodland shade;
Thou conscious witness of unknown delight,
The Lover’s guardian, and the Muse’s aid!
By thy pale beams I solitary rove,
To thee my tender grief confide;
Serenely sweet you gild the silent grove,
My friend, my goddess, and my guide.
E’en thee, fair queen, from thy amazing height,
The charms of young Endymion drew;
Veil’d with the mantle of concealing night;
With all thy greatness and thy coldness too.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762)
Apollo 11 is scheduled to launch July 16, 1969 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 36-story Saturn V rocket with a first stage thrust of 7.5 million pounds will hurl astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into space en route to the moon, 240,000 miles away.
Two hours and 44 minutes into the launch, a “burn” will boost the payload from its 17,500 mile an hour earth orbit to an escape velocity of 25,000 miles per hour. After entering lunar orbit, the Eagle will separate from the Columbia. Armstrong will be the first man to set foot on the moon.
BOOSTER…GO, EECOM…GO FLIGHT, GNC… GO, TELCOM…GO FLIGHT, CONTROL…GO, NETWORK…GO FLIGHT, GO FOR LAUNCH… 50 SECONDS AND COUNTING…TEN, NINE, EIGHT, SEVEN, SIX, FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE, ZERO.
Composer Notes
From my first imaginings of Silver Deity, I knew I wanted it to embody the vastness of the scientific undertaking of the Apollo 11 mission as well as the vastness of time. Opening with a mantra of Greek letters, symbols integral to the mathematics used to design Moon rockets, we are taken into the confidence of Lady Montagu as she strolls through a moonlit arbour. Montagu confides her “tender grief” to the Moon, her “friend” and “guide,” and recalls classical Greek culture with the word “serenely,” a possible reference to Selene, the Greek goddess of the Moon, and her mention of the mortal target of Selene’s love, the shepherd Endymion.
The intensity increases as Montagu addresses the Moon as her “fair queen, from thy amazing height” and TV and radio announcers remind us of the momentous undertaking. After the launch, as the dust falls away, the astronauts are left floating under the Moon’s “pale beams” in their moonlight-gilded rocket. Might they, like Lady Montagu in her moonlight-gilded “silent grove,” confide a “tender grief”? In the emptiness of space, a “silent grove” of planets, stars and star dust, do the astronauts, like the poet, contemplate the Moon’s “greatness” yet “coldness too”?
– Catherine Dalton
Critical Acclaim
There were no works more transporting than the two by Minneapolis composers that closed the main program: Catherine Dalton’s ‘Silver Deity of Secret Night’ and Cantus bass Chris Foss’ ‘Beyond’ – Ron Hubbard, special to the Pioneer Press
Catherine Dalton (store manager) –
There were no works more transporting than the two by Minneapolis composers that closed the main program: Catherine Dalton’s ‘Silver Deity of Secret Night’ and Cantus bass Chris Foss’ ‘Beyond’ – Ron Hubbard, special to the Pioneer Press