The Voyager metaphor: 40 years on

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. See http://web.mit.edu/lilybui/www/ [accessed 10 July 2018].

2. The golden disc contains performances by Glenn Gould, Prelude and Fugue, WTC II, C Major, Arthur Grumiaux, “Gavotte en rondeau” from the solo violin Partita No. 3 in E and Karl Richter, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F, first movement. The selection committee was chaired by Carl Sagan. For details, see http://web.mit.edu/lilybui/www/.

3. David Huron found that “for musical textures employing relatively homogenous timbres, the accuracy of identifying the number of concurrent voices drops markedly at the point where a three-voice texture is augmented to four voices” (Huron 1989, 361).

4. A recent study that scrutinises the entwining of cultural and personal tastes typified in the Voyager committee’s deliberations is Scott Burnham’s “personal attempt to describe what is striking about the sound of Mozart” (Burnham 2012, 4).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Trippett

David Trippett is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge. His research focusses on nineteenth-century cultural and intellectual history, Richard Wagner and the intersection of German aesthetics with the growth of the natural sciences. His current research, funded by an ERC starting grant, examines how a scientific materialist conception of sound was formed alongside a dominant culture of romantic idealism during the nineteenth century.