SATB Chorus a cappella (2024)

Text by Talia Sheehan & Charles Anthony Silvestri

We believe that quantum entanglement is one of the “Universal Mysteries”—a phrase and concept coined by Talia, referring to the many profound enigmas of our world and of the cosmos that modern science presents us with—that demands some kind of sacralization in song. Therefore, working together with our dear friend and colleague Tony Silvestri, we decided to create a hymn to the mystery of quantum entanglement, a phenomenon at once fundamental to the nature of reality and deeply analogous to the mysterious intertwining that happens in human relationships. The text was produced by Tony and Talia over the course of several weeks in an “entangled” manner (Tony’s inspired idea), in which each of them took turns writing a line, one responding to the other, until a whole poem gradually emerged. Benedict (with some crucial input from Talia) then composed music to fit the text using quartal and quintal harmonies derived from a series of interlocking major tetrachords in which each set of four notes shares a central note in common, like electrons orbiting around a nucleus. At the heart of the music are also “entangled pairs” of major seconds that dance around one another, spinning, spiralling, colliding, reacting, but never finally resolving or separating from one another. All these are just tiny glimpses, of course, into the unimaginable complexity of actual reality. But we hope that our hymn to quantum entanglement will help you and your audiences celebrate the awesome mysteries of this weird and wonderful universe that we get to be part of for a time. And who knows how long we get anyway? Time probably isn’t real.

—Benedict & Talia Sheehan