75 Muons

"The dice of God are always loaded."
— Emerson

75 Muons is a composition for solo marimba, electronics, and cosmic ray detector: a collaboration between a performer, a bespoke particle detector, and forces arriving from deep space.

The piece has no fixed duration. It cannot end until exactly 75 muons have been detected by the cosmic ray detector on stage. How long that takes is unknowable in advance; it is determined entirely by subatomic particle activity in the venue.

Each detected muon triggers a flash of light and advances the electronics: pre-composed textural pads and processed sounds, harmonically linked to the marimba’s progression, shift and deepen with each particle arrival.
The electronics are fixed in structure but unknown in timing; the harmonic journey of the piece is composed, but when each new section begins is decided by the cosmos. The energy of each muon is mapped to the intensity of both the electronics and the lighting; a more powerful particle produces a louder, more saturated response.

The marimba writing embodies this tension between the human and the cosmic.
The performer’s hands move gradually further and further apart across the instrument as the piece progresses; a physical enactment of harmonic distance, and a quiet comment on the vast journeys these particles have taken to arrive in the room.
The right hand maintains a steady human pulse; the left hand may only strike in response to detector flashes.

The performer cannot progress to the next section of the score until a fixed number of muons have been detected. The number of detections required varies section by section; the composer's way of shaping a dramatic arc within a process that cannot be controlled.

Theoretically, 75 Muons sits at the intersection of aleatoric composition and live data sonification. It extends the Cagean tradition of chance operations but replaces the I Ching or dice with actual physical randomness; cosmic ray arrivals that are genuinely beyond prediction or control.
The fixed harmonic structure of the electronics and score creates a paradox: the piece has a composed destination, but no composed path. Time in the work is not musical time but cosmic time, and the performer must inhabit both simultaneously. The result is a work in which the boundary between composition, performance, and natural phenomenon is dissolved.

Credits

Catherine Ring - Marimba

Composition, electronics, production & concept by Christo Squier

Recorded live at Brunel Goods Shed, Stroud, UK 4.10.2023

Motz Workman - Filming & editing
Bill Brooks - Recording & mixing
Guillaume Robertson - Mixing and mastering
Chris Ball - Creative technologist
Dr. Teppei Katori - Scientific advisor 

With thanks: The Faculty of Natural Mathematical & Engineering Sciences, CosmicWatch, SVA, Hidden Notes, d&b Audiotechnik and King's College London