Cosmic Soundscapes II

The Black Hole
October 2022
Duration: 3:00
Part of Cosmic Soundscapes II soundcloud.com/bruce-klepper-1/sets/cosmic-soundscapes-ii
Direct image of a supermassive black hole at the core of Messier 87 
Bells sound library by John-Marc Ventimiglia @john-marc-ventimiglia
For strings, flutes, celeste, bells sound library, field recordings, virtual instruments and percussion 

On April 10th 2019, the world saw the first-ever image of a black hole, as an international team of researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope project released their look at the supermassive black hole. 

This black hole captured by the telescope lies 55 million light-years away, at the heart Messier 87, a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. At 6.5 billion times bigger than our sun, it is unimaginably supermassive—the surrounding circular field of electrified gas or plasma captured in the image measures about 30 billion miles across, or four times Pluto’s orbit.

Paradoxically, despite their light-swallowing capability, black holes are the most luminous objects in the universe. Material — gas, dust, shredded stars — that falls into a black hole is heated to millions of degrees as it swirls around the drain of doom in a dense maelstrom of electromagnetic fields. Most of that matter falls into the black hole, but some is pushed out, by enormous pressures and magnetic fields. How all of this energy arises and is marshaled remains unknown to astronomers. 

The singularity at the center of a black hole is the ultimate no man's land: a place where matter is compressed down to an infinitely tiny point, and all conceptions of time and space completely break down. And it doesn't really exist. Something has to replace the singularity, but we're not exactly sure what.

The Black Hole

The Pillars of Creation
November 2022
Duration: 3:10
Part of Cosmic Soundscapes II https://soundcloud.com/bruce-klepper-1/sets/cosmic-soundscapes-ii
For harp, piano, celesta, virtual instruments and percussion.
These towering tendrils of cosmic dust and gas sit at the heart of M16, or the Eagle Nebula. The aptly named Pillars of Creation, featured in this stunning Hubble image, are part of an active star-forming region within the nebula and hide newborn stars in their wispy columns.

Although this is not Hubble’s first image of this iconic feature of the Eagle Nebula, it is the most detailed. The blue colors in the image represent oxygen, red is sulfur, and green represents both nitrogen and hydrogen. The pillars are bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young stars located just outside the frame. The winds from these stars are slowly eroding the towers of gas and dust.

Stretching roughly 4 to 5 light-years, the Pillars of Creation are a fascinating but relatively small feature of the entire Eagle Nebula, which spans 70 by 55 light-years. The nebula, discovered in 1745 by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux, is located 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens.

The Pillars Of Creation

The Cosmic Hourglass
December 2022
Duration: 3:10
Part of Cosmic Soundscapes II soundcloud.com/bruce-klepper-1/sets/cosmic-soundscapes-ii
Special thanks to John-Marc Ventimiglia @john-marc-ventimiglia for creating the “gliss” program that is used to create the outline of the hourglass shape and short glisses in this piece.
For harp, strings, flute, virtual instruments and percussion.
The James Webb Space Telescope  spotted a blazing cosmic hourglass filled with vibrant colors and hiding a fledgling star, or protostar, at its heart. The blazing formation within the Taurus star-forming region and the protostar within it has been hidden to telescopes by a dense, dark cloud of gas and dust.

The protostar the image centers around is hidden from view in the neck of a dark, hourglass-shape cloud of gas and dust. The dark line across the middle of the neck is a protoplanetary disc — dense gas and dust that could form a planet in the future — about the size of our solar system.

The Cosmic Hourglass

The Lagoon Nebula 
January 2023
Duration: 3:00
Part of Cosmic Soundscapes II soundcloud.com/bruce-klepper-1/sets/cosmic-soundscapes-ii
Special thanks to John-Marc Ventimiglia https://soundcloud.com/john-marc-ventimiglia for creating the panning program that was used to compose the movement of instruments in the sound field.
The Lagoon Nebula is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region. The Lagoon Nebula was discovered by Giovanni Hodierna before 1654 and is one of only two star-forming nebulae faintly visible to the eye from mid-northern latitudes.
For virtual instruments and percussion.

The Lagoon Nebula

Mysterious, Magical, Music is Wonderful!  Thanks for visiting!  Please feel free to share my music.  Enjoy!

Bruce Klepper is a Colorado based composer with thousands of listeners worldwide. Klepper studied music composition in the 1970's and received a degree in music composition and theory.  After writing music for many years and starting a tech company based in Colorado, Klepper retired in 2014 from business so he could devote myself to his true passion, composing music. Klepper's music premiered in Carnegie Hall, September 2022.  Klepper writes music in a number of different styles, including contemporary classical music, jazz, soundscapes using field recordings, ambient music, and ballet music.  Klepper has been composing music for Danse Etoile Ballet (www.danseetoile.org) since 2016. Klepper has been collaborating with Parlando School of Musical Arts (www.parlando.org) faculty Britta De Groot and Sergei Govorov for over a year now, composing and arranging new music for the dynamic piano and saxophone duo to premier around the United States. Klepper's music can be heard on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and SoundCloud. 

NOTE: there is no compression added to the tracks in order to preserve the full range of dynamics. You may want to listen with headphones or increase the volume on some tracks for the best listening experience.

Cosmic Soundscapes II

Bruce Klepper | Composer