Pierre’s Dissertation on Crystals (2016)
from Luminosity: The Passions of Marie Curie
for bass-baritone and electronics
11 minutes
Commission/Premiere Info: Commissioned and premiered by Nicholas Isherwood with video by Quintan Ana Wikswo on April 14th, 2016 at CSULA Concert Hall.
Program Notes
Luminosity: The Passions of Marie Curie is a multi-media opera about the passions of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie, the discover of radium, for voices, flute, percussion, piano, and electronics, commissioned and premiered in part by soundSCAPE, Tony Arnold, soprano and Either/OR Ensemble, composed by Pamela Madsen with projected images and video by Quintan Ana Wikswo. The opera explores the concept of the invisible in life and death. This opera ponders the ephemeral fleeting nature of things beyond one's grasp—that which is beyond seeing, but is felt, and focuses on the question posed by Marie Curie: "Are you there?" This quest for the invisible was at the heart of Marie and Pierre Curie's work—in their discovery of radium, radioactivity, and their exploration of spiritualism, and the quest of quantify life beyond death. From Poland to Paris, a visionary young chemist transcends the frontiers of her era, redefining physics, chemistry, and the role of women in science and society. Her pursuit of radioactive elements brings her as close as humanly possible to both creation and destruction – a legacy of her work that continues to resound across time and space.
Pierre’s Dissertation on Crystals occurs at the beginning of the opera—when Marie Curie first appears in the Curie lab and encounters Pierre Curie, deep in thought, uttering the text of his Doctoral Thesis: Propriétés magnétiques des corps à diverses temperatures (Curie's dissertation, 1895). For the libretto for the text of this work, I used key word from his thesis— compression of crystals in Piezoelectricity, ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, diamagnetism and the effect of temperature on magnetic fields, the Curie law, scale, constant, and Curie point and extraterrestrial magnetic fields. At the end of Pierre’s aria, he becomes aware that Marie Curie is in the room, and this leads him to the discovery of the Curie Dissymmetry Principle: a physical effect of a dissymmetry in a gravitational field. For the projected images and sounds, I worked directly at the Curie Lab and amongst the streets where the Curies lived in Paris. Quintan Ana Wikswo’s installations of projected film, video and photography explore the chemistries of expired and altered film stocks, infrared, and alternative optics and lenses. For the audio for the electronics, I used actual sounds of piezoelectricity from crystals, and sounds of electricity—ominous Geiger counters predicting the plight of radiation poisoning. The electronics are fixed media with projected images/video playback, images by Quintan Ana Wikswo, electronics by Pamela Madsen/ Eric Dries.
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Performances
Performances
June 10, 2024 | Nicholas Isherwood at Buffalo in June Festival, Buffalo, NY
April 9, 2024 | Nicholas Isherwood in Meng Concert Hall, Cal State Fullerton
October 28, 2016 | Nicholas Isherwood at the Conservatory of Cuneo, Italy
April 15, 2016 | Nicholas Isherwood at Cal State Fullerton
April 14, 2016 | Nicholas Isherwood at Cal State LA