Interview:

The Earth, hung over the void, tethered to the Sun and wrapped in a symphony of starsong is an ancient poetic image, its intense beauty almost spoilt in the realisation it is so scientifically accurate. With the very recent detection of magnetic “ropes” linking the Earth to the Sun, on top of the older discovery that distant radio stars pulse rhythmically and send out a throbbing drumbeat, we can only wonder how the writer of the book of Job, the very oldest part of the Bible, painted the world with such inspired accuracy. The book of Job explores the problem of pain and evil in the world and has possibly the most dramatic ending in all literature: God rides in on a whirlwind and asks Job some difficult questions: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” He says, “while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” [Job 38:4,7, NIV]

These songs of Heaven were once fought over in a thousand year war, recorded surprisingly, less in the history of music than of mathematics. Yet perhaps it’s not so unexpected, that truth, God and musical harmony have always found expression in arithmetic. The Riemann zeta function which pertains to prime numbers has never fully been solved but we know enough about it to be certain that there is only one adequate description: music. In today’s world, measurement is supreme. It drives both science and technology. The songs of Heaven can be analysed into amplitude, frequency, phase, and modulation without ever revealing the stunning answer to that question God asked Job. If we look at the night sky, we gaze not just into space but deep into time. The light from those chanting pulsars might be arriving on earth now, but it comes from the dawn of the universe. Moreover the theory of relativity tells us that as far as the starlight itself is concerned, no time has passed since it set out on its journey. Time and eternity are so entangled that when we look up into the night sky, the morning stars are still singing to an enraptured angelic host. So as far as I’m concerned, the reason music touches our souls is that it’s simply resonating with those ever-ancient ever-new songs of Heaven. Where was I when the morning stars sang and the angels shouted for joy? Well, you know, it feels strange to say it, but right here.

“The reason music touches our souls is that it’s simply resonating with those ever-ancient ever-new songs of Heaven.”
– Anne Hamilton, author of “The Singing Silence:  What The Design Of The Universe Tells Us About God”