Bill Barclay, the artistic director of Concert Theater Works and Music Before 1800 and former director of music at Shakespeare's Globe in London for nine years, is spearheading a documentary project titled What Music Is, which proposes a new hypothesis about music. Barclay is approaching music as a musician, but he is treating the subject of What Music Is as a citizen journalist seeking to understand what music is doing in our species and the universe. The project started about 20 years ago when Barclay was asked to give a lecture on the music of the spheres for a humanity series at Shakespeare & Company.
The core of the hypothesis is that music is an "invisible everyday miracle" that is central to understanding the universe. Ancient cultures, including the Greeks, considered music to be completely central. They made music audible so that people could hear relationships and dimensions without needing to perform the mathematics themselves. Barclay contends that music is the easiest way for everyone to collectively learn about and discover the mysteries of the universe. He aims to show how music connects elements of existence as small as the orbitals of electrons in an atom to things as big as the orbitals of planets around star systems millions of light years away.
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Barclay had a "wild moment of recognition" when he discovered that three of Jupiter's moons were locked in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with each other, which correspond to three of the first harmonics of the overtone series. This observation suggested that there may be a "higher order of organization in the cosmos" that is not yet fully understood. Science in the past 100 years has recognized that at the smallest level, everything seems to be vibration and oscillation. While most vibrations are irregular, regular vibrations—like the Earth moving around the sun or human circadian rhythms—affect other nearby regular vibrations. Crucially, regular vibrations in a closed system will not stay in dissonance forever; they will self-harmonize and come to a stable relationship over time. This principle, known as entrainment along the stable nodes of the harmonic series, explains why Jupiter's moons have arrived in consonance. This phenomenon also explains why the Trappist one solar system, 39 light-years away from Earth, has seven planets locked in orbital resonance around their star. Music makes people feel extraordinary things because it puts them in touch with this cosmic principle—the path of least resistance—which takes less energy in a closed system to lock into harmonic phase.
Peyton Rutkowsk, who works with Barclay on this project, shares that the stories music can tell are those that other forms cannot. The experience is more than just listening to music; it is having a physical experience, and these "incredible phenomenon" can be explained and understood. This new appreciation extends to the orchestra, concerts in general, and the relationships people have with one another, showing all of these harmonious elements coming together. Rutkowsk, who met Barclay at Vassar College where they were both music majors and conductors, also discusses Barclay's concept of how the orchestra can be featured along with dramatic action and visuals. Rutkowsk thinks that this concert will be beautiful no matter the context, but stresses that the physical experience is required when attending live and in person. When the audience is in the concert hall, they are feeling the actual vibrations, energy, love, and excitement, which is "so real in the concert hall". Rutkowsk points out that in a concert setting, the audience is not multitasking, but is there solely to hear the sound, a simple switch that neuroscientists can easily test, which causes a "huge range of differences in your brain" compared to passively listening.
Rutkowsk explains that attending a live concert is different from watching a presentation at home because there is an element of being present with all the people and instruments, which are resonating and transforming the air in a way that is absent when listening to a facsimile of music through a loudspeaker. Listening through a loudspeaker is listening to an "illusion of sound," which the music theorist Armory Schaefer described as "schizophonic," where the musical experience is separated from the actual source. Rutkowsk emphasizes that when one is in the same room as the musicians and instruments, the experience is totally different.
Barclay's concepts also explore the natural tendency for consonance and harmony, suggesting that these things are special in the universe and part of who we are on both a physical and psychological level. Rutkowsk adds that an orchestra serves as the greatest metaphor for civic cooperation because the "emerging property" of this social cohesion, when successful, is "so beautiful and sonorous and obvious" that the lessons should be applied everywhere. An orchestra works because every member has a very fine-tuned awareness of how they fit into the whole, requiring dozens of people to commit their full energy to a common sound, practicing patience and deep listening even when playing more rests than notes. The mission of this work is to enable the "orbits in our families and our communities" to find stability among others in their ecosystem. The universe has chaotic elements and entropy, but it also has an inclination towards entrainment—a powerful and peaceful force.
