Yarlung executive producer Russell Ward deserves credit for encouraging Yarlung in an additional direction this year and last.  Russell’s love of music and his background in quantum physics and the origins of things united.  These inspired his Symmetriā project.  In short, Russell encourages us to hear and feel connections between music composed by human beings and music resulting from nature.  Olivier Messiaen heard music in bird song, of course, and incorporated much “bird song” played by acoustic and electronic instruments into his compositions for human musicians to perform.  Russell would argue that we might perceive bird song and human-composed music on an equal footing, and he asks us to hear music derived from files of data captured from atomic and subatomic particle evolution and decay in a similar way. 

So far, Russell collaborated with Yarlung Records to release Symmetriā Pario, an album juxtaposing subatomic particle “music” with music already extant in the Yarlung catalog.  Russell tells a convincing story and working on the liner notes with him taught me more about physics than I learned in my first half-century of life.

In his next project, tentatively titled Symmetriā Prodeo, Russell aims to extend the project using sampled instruments which will tentatively be released through CD Baby and the major download and streaming companies. 

For Russell’s third album, titled Symmetriā Pario: Creation, we plan to commission new music recorded by living breathing musicians to further explore the links between the quantum world and the concert hall.  Please stay tuned for this upcoming journey. 

Intrigued by Russell’s vision, Fanfare interviewed Russell Ward and published a series of articles about the project.  These are reproduced here with permission.

Thank you Russell for suggesting new perspectives in hearing and enjoying music together. 

–Bob Attiyeh

Here is Raymond Tuttle’s article about Symmetriā Pario, the first album in Russell’s project:

Most people recognize a link between music and mathematics. That link can extend to other sciences as well. Borodin, for example, was a chemist, and Albert Schweitzer was a physician. Closer to home, for many years this humble writer contributed to Fanfare in the evenings and was an immunologist in the daytime. 

This CD reflects on the nature of music itself—what is it, and what is its relationship to quantum mechanics? On Symmetriā Pario (literally, “I give birth to symmetry”), executive producer Russell Ward alternates recordings previously released on the Yarlung Records label with brief sonic representations of subatomic particle generation and decay. The latter are derived from files created at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. CERN’s director, Dr. Fabiana Gianotti, was trained not just as a world-class physicist but also as a classical pianist, and she gave Ward permission to use sound files created at CERN by Dr. Lily Asquith. Using Apple’s Logic ProX, Ward converted these sound files to MIDI violin and piano tracks, and these 10 CERN tracks serve as “intermezzi” between the 11 conventional tracks. Most of the CERN tracks are less than a minute in length. Whether or not they make “good” music is beside the point. We might not perceive them as musical, per se, but our perception is limited. This is music in which human intention and human preference play no role, and, as such, I think that John Cage would have appreciated it. So do I, in small doses. 

Apart from that, this CD is a sampler for what Yarlung Records has to offer, and what it has to offer is unusual and attractive. I particularly enjoyed the two movements from Robert Schumann’s arrangement, for violin and piano, of Bach’s Solo Violin Partita No. 1, eloquently played by Martin Chalifour and Joanne Pearce Martin. Schumann arranged all of BWV 1001–1006 for violin and piano, and I wish more musicians would play and record these arrangements. The same performers also are responsible for the “gently frantic” (I love Ward’s description of this movement) Perpetuum mobile from Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. Many a violinist plays this movement as an excuse to let listeners know how impressive his or her technique is. Chalifour’s edgier playing walks a tightrope, and both he and the pianist give us more by giving us less in this movement. There is not a performance here that I did not like. I am not sure that they benefit from being heard in alternation with CERN’s music, but no actual harm has been done. 

I am honestly not sure who the intended audience for this CD is—the cover photo of violinist Chalifour superimposed over CERN’s Atlas Detector (part of the accelerator complex) probably won’t mean much to those who are not nuclear physicists. Furthermore, it takes more time to explain how the CERN samples were created than it does to actually play them. Symmetriā Pario probably works best as a collection of under-performed works played by musicians whose unfussy and dedicated performances mirror the quiet dedication of those who have chosen science as a career. 

—Raymond Tuttle

There are intermezzi, and then there are intermezzi; let’s put these into the latter bracket. This album uses CERN (Conseil européen pour la recerche nucléaire) LHC (Large Hadron Collider) subatomic particle generation and decay files; it then translates them to MIDI piano and violin tracks using Apple LogicProX. As they are electronically generated, the “instruments” do exude a metallic, manufactured sound entirely consistent with the basic idea. The piano-violin tones represent particle-antiparticle pairs. The “composer” is listed as the scientist Brian L. Ruhe, with the electronic realizations by Russell Ward. The actual pieces of music are gleaned from Yarlung’s catalog, beginning with Elinor Frey and David Fung’s performance of some elusive Saariaho from the Yarlung disc Dialoghi. 

Twelve seconds of CERN lead us to the first excerpt, taken from Steven Stucky’s Pinturas de Tamayo (Paintings of Tamayo), a reminder of Stucky’s stature as a composer. These are perfectly conceived miniatures, in superb performances by Joanne Pearce Martin and Martin Chalifour (it is Chalfour who is on the CD cover, juxtaposed on a photo of part of CERN). 

Thirty seconds of CERN separates this from the Perpetuum mobile finale of Ravel’s Violin Sonata in G from Chalifour and Pearce Martin; it’s interesting how the CERN Higgs No. 2 which follows seems like some sort of explosion of the Ravel in its nervous intensity. 

I had not come across Max Grafe’s Obsidian Liturgy for piano before, but it is pretty much as black-textured as its title implies; Mika Sasaki is a superb interpreter, somehow finding solace in the quietest, bleakest passages. It’s quite a step (via some CERN, of course) to Debussy’s La plus que lent as arranged for violin and piano by Leon Roques. More impressive still, though, is Chalifour’s solo Prokofiev, full of just the right spirit if captured in a somewhat dry acoustic. 

Hearing Bach in this context reminds us of the Master’s eternal voice. Two movements from the Solo Violin Partita in B Minor, BWV 1002, heard in Schumann’s arrangement for violin and piano, are heard toward the end of the program. The “Sarabande et Double” is stately, lovely; how strange the 10 seconds of ultra-staccato CERN sounds before the Bourée launches. The disc ends where it began, with one of Saariaho’s Papillons. The thought did strike me that the Saariaho might have been chosen for its metallic sounds (both Nos. 1 and 4 exhibit this trait), which seem to hold a kinship with some of the CERN-generated sounds. 

A long booklet essay explains much about CERN, and even explains the disc title (it references both the birth of the Universe and the birth of particles within the ATLAS detector). High-powered stuff, beyond doubt, and utterly unique; and well-chosen repertoire, too. 

–Colin Clarke

Peter Burwasser interviews Yarlung executive producer Russell Ward about the creative motivations behind his Symmetriā recordings:

BY PETER BURWASSER AND LEE BURWASSER 

Music and science have always maintained a vital relationship. This is especially true in the field of physics. The most famous physicist of them all, Albert Einstein, played the violin all of his life, and would even make regular trips from his home in Princeton to Philadelphia to take part in an amateur orchestra at the Settlement Music School there. The largest scientific project on earth, the multi-billion dollar European Organization for Nuclear Research (commonly known by the acronym for its French spelling, CERN) is headed by a trained classical pianist. 

The behemoth Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which accelerates atomic particles to nearly the speed of light, yields sound files that, to even an untrained ear, resemble musical patterns. In order to demonstrate this phenomenon in a palpable way, Yarlung Records Company executive producer Russell Ward has produced an album, Symmetriā Pario, that pairs selections of traditional instrumental classical music with CERN music files. In order to give full justice to the remarkably dense nature of this subject, I have enlisted the assistance of my son, Lee Burwasser, who teaches physics at a selective Philadelphia high school. The result is what is, in all likelihood, the wonkiest interview in Fanfare history, but also one of the most thought-provoking. Enjoy the ride. 

PB: The basic conceit of the album is finding music, as you put it, independent of human experience. In this case, the source is the world’s largest particle accelerator, at the nuclear research facility known as CERN, in Geneva. How did you come up with this concept? 

The idea of analyzing CERN’s particle collision data as sound files, and even as musical tones, belongs to Dr. Lily Asquith. Others, particularly musicians, have used such files as parts of more elaborate compositions or performances. I am interested in a slightly different aspect, starting with a question: whether the particle generation and decay patterns themselves incorporate a structure recognizable as music. In other words, music might become a parameter by which the degree of order of such a system is measured (i.e., an order parameter), as it transitions from a random or disordered (collision) phase. The availability of the collision data in a “sonified” form is the inspiration for further exploration of such questions. 

LB: To what extent do you feel that sonified data may show clear patterns of proportionality and rhythm which are nonetheless non-musical in nature? More specifically, can you comment on your personal perception of musicality in the Higgs Jet tracks, data sets which earned their observers the Nobel Prize? 

I believe that if one starts with a concept of music that includes recognizable patterns of symmetry—repeated and inverted sequences, for example, centered on a particular frequency—and then allows this concept to “expand” into a 12-tone regime with no tonal center, one arrives at sequences that blend well with the “sonified” data from particle physics. The Higgs Jet tracks in particular can be centered on a high tone (frequency) representing the Higgs Boson mass (energy). As our concept of music expands, it may be found that it coincides very well with the patterns that exist in events at the quantum-mechanical level. However, I believe that longer sequences of data will be needed to establish a strong correlation. 

LB: The scientists at CERN seek to find patterns in the mostly chaotic quantum fluctuations that characterize the subatomic world, to record the numbers as they appear after each roll of God’s dice (to paraphrase Einstein). Your work explores the question: Can this data be assessed on the basis of its musicality, and if so, will we find correspondence between a data set’s musicality and the presence of physical symmetry? How have the changes you have made to Dr. Asquith’s sound files helped you better address this question? 

Let me answer with a bit of a rephrase: quantum fluctuations, in the context of the history of the Universe (spacetime), refer to the hypothetical period prior (within an undetectable time interval) to the inflationary period, the period of rapid expansion. The transition between these periods theoretically coincided with the manifestation of the symmetry-breaking Higgs mechanism. If one thinks of a glass of warm water, composed of randomly moving molecules, that upon freezing transitions to the crystalline phase, one can appreciate how the water phase is actually more symmetrical than the crystalline phase, in that the water appears the same no matter how it is translated or rotated in space. The crystalline phase appears different as it is rotated, due to the regular structure. In the early formation of particles, the combined electroweak field symmetry was “broken” by the presence of the Higgs field, resulting in a more ordered structure, consisting of elementary particles—some of which now had mass—including quarks and gluons. In the CERN files, we are looking for the presence of these elementary particles as products of decay of the Higgs boson. So it is actually the result of symmetry breaking that we are looking for. 

The corresponding data can be presented as sequences of tones. But are these sequences musical? If they were entirely random, they arguably wouldn’t be. If they consisted only of a repeated pattern, they might not be either. The presence of altered or varying patterns makes them more interesting. My argument is that they can be made more musical simply by changing the timbre and overall sound quality of the playback instrument. In that way they make a better match to what we normally hear as music. 

LB: You write very knowledgably about particle physics. Do you have a background in research? 

I received undergraduate degrees in theoretical physics and math from the University of Oregon, decades ago. Since then I have maintained reading (including the math, which is the language of physics) on the subjects, and now read on a higher level than I did when I graduated. My career was in the field of prosthetics and orthotics, which I now approach as a part of oscillator theory (what drew me to the field initially). 

PB: I would also ask, Do you also have a musical background? 

My own background in music performance is negligible. I had early experiences learning to play the clarinet and the ukulele, which went nowhere. What I do treasure is a lifetime of listening to music from the classical music genre, which began with what my parents had on radio and vinyl while I was a child, and continued with my own selections, and attendance at live performances. It was influenced, but not overcome, by relatively brief interests in rock, new-age, and experimental music. In recent years I have regularly attended performances by members of the LA Philharmonic and visiting performers, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. This is an immensely enjoyable way to “train the ear.” 

LB: Can you comment on how knowledge of techniques of noise reduction and improving signal quality necessary to produce a high fidelity record has helped you think on the efforts of physicists as they apply similar techniques to their data? 

There is a very real correspondence between the two. In both cases one reaches the limit expressed in the uncertainty principle, which establishes that momentum and position of an event, also its energy and time, cannot be simultaneously defined beyond a certain error. However, the challenge in both cases is to reduce unwanted scattering events that occur in the detection and transmission of data. Sound is currently being investigated as an alternative to light in quantum computing storage and transmission of data. Computerized algorithms also play an increasing role. To me, the essential question lies in how events at the quantum level are aggregated to a signal at the macroscopic level. 

I have included specific features in the construction of the playback instrument: its source is a CD player, which, though outmoded by file download, incorporates a canonical quantum-mechanical mechanism: the photoelectric effect. The production of photons in the laser diode is also quantum mechanical. Thus we begin with an aggregated quantum-mechanical process occurring between the CD and the optical pickup. This process can be fairly fine-tuned. The amplified output then goes to a series of large tuning forks attached to resonant wood elements, and driven by high-quality audio drivers. The wood elements may incorporate the production of phonons, the quantum-mechanical units of sound energy, which we hear in aggregate. (I must note that recording this apparatus has proved to be very challenging.) 

PB: The music from the accelerator is represented on the CD by MIDI files prepared by CERN researcher Dr. Asquith. Did you also get to hear the original material? If so, what did it sound like? 

The sound files used to generate the tracks used on the album are in the form of mp3 or wav files, as found on the LHC Sounds Library website. These are mainly sequences of plain tones representing data, in turn representing the pattern of decay of particles generated in simulated collisions. I converted these sound files to MIDI instrument tracks within LogicProX. In order to preserve the physical significance of the tones, I attempted to maintain the relative relationships of frequency, amplitude, and tempo between the tones. So the LHC sound files sound much like the files on the album, except for global changes in pitch, key, or tempo, and, especially, timbre. It is the last parameter that is perhaps the most important distinction here. 

PB: It is widely noted that music can never be created in a truly random fashion. For example, John Cage’s aleatory output necessarily includes some degree of human design. Can you comment on this in regards to the CERN files? 

Although it is possible to construct short sound sequences from random data that might be heard as music, the method of generating such files—a purely random process—generally produces a much different sequence with each iteration. In contrast, the methods for simulating individual decay channels for particles in the decay process generally produce similar patterns with each iteration. In other words, the simulated process of decay is not entirely random; it is partly determined by parameters such as particle decay rate and speed that enter into the governing equations. This does not mean that the process of decay is not probabilistic. It means that the degree of variation results in a similar outcome with each iteration. 

Composite or high-energy particles decay into elementary products via certain pathways, or “channels.” Although the determination of decay channel is random, it is influenced (weighted) by a fraction of particles per channel per total, or “branching ratio.” The distribution of the decay products in space is determined by two additional random numbers (angles), and a random, non-angular “boost.” However, the decay products for a given channel are the same, yielding a particular distribution of energy or mass, and the particles are usually contained within a narrow cone, or “jet.” Prior to decay, the parent particle travels a certain distance determined by its speed and probabilistic (mean) lifetime. Thus the decay process is a mix of random and deterministic events. The sound files are generally made by converting the distance traveled from the collision point, the angular displacement, and the energy or mass deposited in the detector cells into parameters of the audible tones, such as timing, frequency, and amplitude. Thus we can expect that a particular decay channel will yield a similar—though not identical—sequence of tones. This is demonstrated in the two “Higgs Jet” tracks. 

PB: The arrangement of the music on the album, with excellent performances from the Yarlung catalog alternating with the CERN files, is both elegant and thought provoking. I realize it is a big subject, but could you share your thought process on how you assembled the program? 

The music chosen for the album, and the order in which the pieces are played, is meant to reflect the sequence of events in the formation of the Universe. At the same time, the sequence of tracks from particle physics relate to the generation and decay of subatomic particles in the collision experiments. There exists a natural correspondence between these two sequences of events: the formation of the Universe is intimately connected with the patterns of generation, decay, and “recombination” of subatomic particles. This process continues in the formation and decay of particles in stars, novae, and particle-particle interaction in Earth’s upper atmosphere, for example. 

PB: Dr. Fabiola Gianotti, the director of CERN, is a trained classical pianist. She has written that “art is based on very clear, mathematical principles like proportion and harmony.” Similarly, you have titled this album Symmetriā Pario, which is Latin for “I give birth to symmetry.” Can it be inferred, therefore, that you and Dr. Gianotti consider atonality and serial music to be unnatural? 

Professor Gianotti has commented that the music of Bach and Haydn (and perhaps others of the Classical period) comprises music that is most expressive of mathematical concepts of symmetry and harmony. I don’t know professor Gianotti personally, and have not had the benefit of instruction from her directly, but these concepts are themselves very interesting to me. My impression is that the Classical period comprises the type of music that is most useful in identifying specific patterns of particle formation, whether these are elementary or composite particles, or their distribution within atoms and molecules. The process of decay may also include such patterns. However, I hear the music of the Classical period as extending in a natural way to 12-tone or “post-tonal” music. This music also seems to pair well with many of the CERN tracks. The Classical period is simply the foundation. Professor Gianotti’s comments, coming from a classically trained musician and an experimental physicist working at the highest level of particle physics, are very encouraging and motivating to me, and undoubtedly to others studying this area. 

–end of interview.  Peter Burwasser’s comments continue:

When I was a teenager growing up in upstate New York, I had a morning newspaper route. I never tired of the orchestra of birdsong that greeted me every day as the sun arose. This was many years before I ever heard of Olivier Messiaen, but like the great composer, this experience led me to a lifelong appreciation of the existence of non-human produced music in the natural world. Russell Ward, an executive producer at Yarlung Records, has taken the concept even further, to sub-atomic levels, with this extraordinary recording contrasting short pieces of music from the classical repertoire and interspersing them with MIDI sound tracks (he calls them intermezzi) derived from the massive particle accelerators at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (commonly known as CERN, the acronym of the French spelling of the institution). 

The technical details of how and why this works is discussed in detail in my (and my physicist son’s) interview with Ward in the preceding article. My purpose in this review is to evaluate the artistic value of this endeavor. I will say at once that I found the project musically compelling and deeply thought-provoking. Ward, who is not a professional musician, has brilliantly arranged the material in a way that knits the written music with the MIDI tracks with intuitive precision. Finely textured music (such as the opening track from the wonderful Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho) is followed by delicate clusters of sounds from the guts of the accelerators. Music with very regular rhythms, such as the music from Bach and Prokofiev, is echoed by metronomic electronic streams of notes. Smooth waves of MIDI tones are matched to the legato language of Debussy and Ravel. Or, as is the case for the meticulously constructed music of the late Steven Stucky, there are segues that include some combination of all of these attributes. 

It is not clear to me to what extent the human element affects the way the music from the accelerator is recreated. The MIDI file uses piano and violin tones to convert the raw sound data into what is heard here, and Ward sets the key and tempo. Ward himself asks the question: Does this provide “evidence that interactions occurring at the most fundamental level of physics incorporate a structure recognizable as music?” For me, the answer is unquestionably yes, just as much so as was the case for those singing birds I encountered in my youth. Is it “found” music, or is there some deeper element of creation at work here? That is one of many questions that this audacious release conjures. The researchers at CERN, beyond their technical work, surely consider such mysteries as well, as they invariably find themselves recognizing the underlying poetry and music in the work that they do. 

Yarlung Records is a new label to me, but I am very impressed by the high quality of the performances and the glistening recorded sound. Ward’s extensive notes, which contain, alternately, discussions of physics, music, and philosophy, are fascinating, to say the least. He promises future explorations of “quantum-composed music.” Stay tuned! 

—Peter Burwasser