Home in Universe

Let’s celebrate the Universe, – astoundingly beautiful and mind-boggling in scope. For the music, we share Bach’s immortal “Art of the Fugue.”

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This week’s audacious movie: Our Home in the Universe

Apr 25, 2025

Space telescopes orbit the Earth, turning their crisp optics to the stars of our Milky Way galaxy. . .and the hundreds of billions of galaxies beyond. Our minds cannot comprehend this vastness. Yet the beauty and diversity fill our hearts, as revealed by such stunning photos.

A fugue starts with a simple theme, then adds playful harmony, repeated and layered across different voices. Here we have just the first movement – Contrapunctus 1, arranged and performed by organist Brian Hoffman. The unique rendition of the piece was created specifically to accompany this video.

He also used MIDI software to enhance the multiple interweaving harmonies. We developed the visuals and music together, iterating until it felt right. Thanks Brian for your heart, soul and hard work on this.

Yet this is just the first movement of Art of the Fugue – the stage-setting to get us from the Universe to Earth. Next week we’ll have two more movements, Contrapunctus 2 & 3, as performed by the MDR Sinfonieorchester at BachFest 2022 in Leipzig, Germany.

Then we launch our ambitious goal of the full Art of the Fugue, with its 18 movements. We’ll work with multiple musicians, all Bach aficionados, each expressing their own interpretation of a favorite movement in the series – all with glorious views of Earth. It may take a year to complete. We hope you’ll enjoy the journey.