When Matter Touches Antimatter – Music by Rodney Rawlings
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:
Tenor Brian Minnick, November 3, 2017, Central Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas; a winner of Second Fresh Squeezed Ounce of Art Song, One Ounce Opera:
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.