Alex Ross, in this week’s New Yorker, writes about the late composer Giacinto Scelsi and his use of monotone patterns. (Now I’m kicking myself for missing the five Scelsi string quartets at the Miller Theather recently.) Ross ends on an astronomical note about the mother of all monotones:
Scientific researchers have recently observed a musical event that employs a curiously familiar style: a black hole in the Perseus cluster of galaxies is emitting a B-flat fifty-seven octaves below middle C.
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