Shattering Suns | Nova | Shockwave | The Heart of the Sun | Pale Blue Dot | Viriditas | Stephen Taylor

Pale Blue Dot
The fourth movement of Shattering Suns by Stephen Taylor. Duration: 4'15"

paleblue picture

Click here to see the first page of the score.
mp3 file (6.7 MB)

Pale Blue Dot is dedicated to the memory of the astronomer and writer Carl Sagan, who used the phrase to describe the Earth as it appears from the edge of the Solar System--a pale blue dot caught in a sunbeam. One of Sagan's ideas is that we are made of "starstuff." When a star explodes, it releases into the Universe vital elements for life (like carbon and oxygen) that are formed only in the hearts of stars. In other words, unless stars die, complex beings like us would never exist.

A solo flute sends out a lonely, repeated signal. A solemn, dark brass chorale answers. Life, emerging from the dying remnants of stars, searches for other life...


Watercolor by Hua Nian.

Last updated 6/21/01.
Copyright © 1998-2001 by Stephen Taylor,
[email protected]