June
9, 2001, Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History,
Washington, DC, USA
(Thank
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(click
as noted along text or below text material for music accompanying presentation.)
Genome Music: metaphorical
music
Thanks to Vicky Whittemore, Francis Collins and the staff at Genetic
Alliance.
I am a composer. An explorer of soundscapes and musical landscapes.
An adventurer. Sort of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Music!
I stand in awe of the genetic code, its deep countrapuntal complexity
born of utter simplicity: just four bases: A,T,C and G spin out
patterns of chemical
recipes for the creation of life!
I could tell you about all the correspondences and symbolism of
the number 4. 4 Directions (N,S,E,W), paired like these bases AT
- CG, the 4 Elements of Medieval science (Fire, Earth, Air and Water),
the 4 Seasons, the 4 Winds, the 4 Hebrew letters of the name of
Yahweh, the 4 Noble Truths of the Buddha, the 4 Gospels, or more
to the point of music: the 4 stringed harp of the Kalahari Bushmen,
the four note tetrachord of Ancient Greek music theory, the 4 holed
Suling flute of Java and Bali . . . I could tell you about these
resonances, but I won’t.
Rather. . . let me take these 4 bases: A,T,C and G and assign musical
pitches to them, then sustain them (Click
here to download sound Nos. 1 and 2), then use the first 100
or so bases from Chromosome 1 to play these pitches back (Click
here for sound No. 3). Then use a percussive type instrument/sound
to play this chromosome (Click
here for No. 4). And finally, like all the Chromosome 1’s
in the body - overlap and play them all together, sort of a "fugue"
or "round", the "Row,row,row your boat of Life"(Click
here for No. 5).
Continuing on my adventure I recalled my time spent at the Schola
Cantorum in Switzerland studying Gregorian Chant and remembered
that all of the thousands of chant are catalogued by their beginning
musical phrase known as incipits. From these incipits you could
tell the mode and character of each type of chant. So. . . I then
began to wonder if I created my own incipit catalog of the beginnings
of the chromosomes in the Human Genome - would I hear different
“characters” of chromosomes (Click
here for No. 6).
Then, what if I put all these beginnings together and let them speak
for themselves. (Click
here for No. 7)
And finally, I began to learn from my explorations about how the
codons or the grouping of these 4 bases into triplets created a
recipe for specific amino acids - these 20 amino acids had abbreviations
that use 20 letters of our alphabet - so . . .what if I listened
to the proteins or enzymes created by specific chains of these amino
acids? This gave me a manageable range of notes since, for instance,
the Insulin protein is made up of only 110 amino acids or 330 bases
as compared to the 263 million bases of just Chromosome 1! By working
with some of these shorter proteins, it is possible to hear the
complete protein in a single 2 minute piece. For instance, I simply
typed in the letters of the amino acids for Insulin, chose a slow
tempo and had the pattern played back by a sample of a vocal choir
- so here is that piece of music, Insulin played through once (Click
here for No. 8).
So. . . what does this all mean?
For me, as a composer, it is a touchstone of curiosity.
A springboard for metaphor.
A map of wonder.
And, as my favorite Ancient Greek guy, Socrates said, "Wisdom
begins with wonder."