Through the latest imagery of the stars and some of the greatest orchestral music ever written, Professor Cox examines the links between cosmology and music to explore what it means to live a finite, fragile life in an infinite, eternal universe.
In A Symphonic Odyssey with Professor Brian Cox, spectacular imagery is displayed on a giant video screen suspended from the ceiling of the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. In front of the screen is the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Northey. Through music and words, Brian and the orchestra take turns telling a dramatic story about the origin of the universe through black holes to the end of time.
“Our small world orbits around one star amongst four hundred billion inside one galaxy amongst two thousand billion in the small patch of the universe we can see,” says Brian.
“We are a fragile spec in a limitless ocean of stars. The questions raised by our observations of the Universe are profound; to put it bluntly, when confronted by the size and scale of the universe, what’s the point?
“A Symphonic Odyssey is part of my personal search for answers. I don’t claim to have THE answer, of course. As one of my heroes, Carl Sagan wrote, astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience; anyone who claims to have THE answer is not humble and is also wrong. Having said that, the search for answers is in itself an important part of what it means to be human.”
The central idea behind A Symphonic Odyssey is that music and science are two of the ways we explore; both are necessary, neither alone is sufficient. We won’t find meaning through the lens of a telescope, but neither will we find meaning if we avert our eyes from nature and, through fear or lack of curiosity, refuse to contemplate the universe beyond.
1 x 90 min
- Producers: Barking Mad Productions and Apollo’s Children
- Executive Producers Steve Bibb and Brian Cox
Watch now on ABC TV and stream now on iview. Click HERE to watch on iview (Australia only).