When Matter Touches Antimatter – Music by Rodney Rawlings

When Matter Touches Antimatter – Music by Rodney Rawlings

The New Renaissance Hat
Rodney Rawlings
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Rodney Rawlings’s art song “When Matter Touches Antimatter” describes a well-known astronomical concept and uses it as a metaphor applicable to a well-known human situation. Here are two takes on it, one by soprano (video and audio) and one by tenor (audio only):

Soprano Amanda Noelle Neal on February 27, 2018, at the event New Brew: The Brewening, Heartland Cafe Bar, Chicago, hosted by Opera on Tap:

Listen and watch on YouTube.

Tenor Brian Minnick, November 3, 2017, Central Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas; a winner of Second Fresh Squeezed Ounce of Art Song, One Ounce Opera:

Listen on Soundcloud.

You can also listen to the original (2004) arrangement of this song: MP3 file.  (Left-click to listen, right-click to download.)

 

Lyrics:

 

Some say there must exist in the outer zone

A world of antimatter.

The thought makes people scatter,

’Cause it could make our own

World shatter

If, by some awful twist, part of it is hurled

And crosses over. Watch out, my friend:

With scarce a chance to catch your breath

You have no world.

 

Ah, you should know by now: Matters of the heart,

Are not just idle chatter

And more like antimatter

If you are worlds apart

While at her

Side, acting like your Earth

Circles ’round her sun.

So at the slightest hint of the end

That comes WHEN MATTER TOUCHES ANTIMATTER,

Run.

 

Because, no matter what you pretend,

That antimatter’s touch is death

To everyone.

 

Rodney Rawlings is a Toronto writer and composer/songwriter. He arrived at the concept of hypercomplex numbers independently, using Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism to guide him.  See his YouTube Channel

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