A Musical Representation of Physics, Technology, and the Cosmos: An Analysis of Eric Whitacre's "Deep Field"

In 1995, after years of servicing missions and repairs following its initial 1990 launch, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured its famous first “Deep Field” image. Despite the initial beliefs that “Hubble wouldn’t reveal any galaxies not already visible from ground-based methods,” Hubble and its team captured over 3,000 galaxies in its first image taken at 10% of Hubble’s available observation time. This image impacted the world beyond the scientific community by its cosmological and scientific implications. In May 2015, composer and conductor Eric Whitacre was co-commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra and BBC Radio 3 for a large orchestral work. Whitacre chose Hubble’s famous “Deep Field” image and its narrative origin as his compositional inspiration and foundation for this new work, consequently titled “Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of the Universe.” Through his conceptual grounding in astrophysics and cosmology, the integration of audience interactivity and technological tools, and an engagement with contemporary compositional aesthetics such as post-Spectralism, Minimalism, and film music, Eric Whitacre’s Deep Field audibly demonstrates the vast, physical universe through the orchestra.

Upon reflecting on the layman's general perception of music, composer Aaron Copland argues that harmonic progression is integral to musical structure and emotional effect. While Whitacre does utilize some traditional harmonic progression, specifically in the “Catharsis” section at the ending of Deep Field (mm. 219-255), for the majority of the work, Whitacre challenges Copland’s narrative with his minimal tonal directionality. Instead, he draws on post-spectral techniques that reflect the overtone series and textural layering to create emotional affect, as seen in mm. 9-14, akin to the work of spectralist composers Gérard Grisey and György Ligeti. Joseph Auner explains that composers influenced by spectralism organize pitch material based on the natural overtone series and timbral considerations rather than tonal function. Whitacre pulls from these spectral aesthetics in Deep Field, using slowly evolving harmonic fields and overtone-inspired voicings, as seen in mm. 15-19, to evoke both sonic beauty and physical laws of nature in sound and acoustics. In addition to the spectral structuring of pitch material, Whitacre’s consonant textures and tonal adjacency act as a means to increase accessibility to listeners, unlike the priorities of the academic spectralists. Whitacre’s pitch language in Deep Field, rooted in overtone-inspired clusters and non-tonal triadic movement, reflects the priorities sought after and developed by the American minimalists. The harmonic language in Deep Field is more about sustained mood and timbral color than goal-oriented modulation and the functional arrivals of traditionally tonal music, much like in film music.

Eric Whitacre describes Deep Field as “in effect a movie soundtrack.” He elaborates that this specifically refers to the harmonic function and motion of the piece, as well as the melodic formal structure. Film musicologist Frank Lehman argues that the harmonic language of film scores has become one of the most powerful conveyors of metaphysical wonder in contemporary media. Lehman identifies the use of pan-triadic, non-functional harmonic progressions as a defining trait of film harmony to create emotional resonance and a sense of wonder without traditional tonal harmonic direction. Whitacre engages with this exact strategy, as Deep Field’s harmonic progressions drift rather than resolve, evoking spatial expansion that causes the form to “build and plateau.” As an additional reference to the film music tradition, Whitacre also concludes his work with the echoes of a repeating chorus into niente in the JJ section at m. 252, a clear reference to the ending movement of Holst’s The Planets.

Whitacre’s pitch material also influenced his formal structure of Deep Field. He “illustrated the story of Hubble…through four musical themes or ‘cells.’ These represent the initial failure of the telescope, the aspiration and struggle to repair it, and then finally the resolution as the telescope began functioning correctly.” The formal structure for Deep Field follows a narrative structure, specifically “The Hero’s Arc.” Deep Field opens with both a tempo and textural reference to Ligeti’s “Lontano” as the string texture blurs and refocuses itself, a direct musical demonstration of Hubble’s early mechanical issues and repairs.

Continuing to approach Whitacre’s work through Copland’s perspective, Copland argues that listeners engage with music on three levels: the sensuous, the expressive, and the sheerly musical. Although Deep Field operates across all three levels, it uniquely invites listeners to move beyond purely emotional storytelling and instead demands a physical musical experience rooted in science and sound. According to Auner, postmodern and contemporary form often favors accumulation, process, and layered intensities as seen in the minimalist movement. Deep Field adopts this approach, building steadily toward a climactic plateau as the telescope comes into focus rather than resolving a programmatic or tonal conflict, despite its underlying narrative structure. This is more accurate to the expansive, non-linear nature of time and space.

The integration of technological aspects in Whitacre’s work continues to shorten the distance between the piece’s inspirational conception and artistic execution. The advent of technology is not only the instigator of Hubble’s famous image, but also its enabler. In accordance with this truth, Whitacre also integrates technology not only in addition to his musical material but also intertwined with it.

The two major technological additions to the orchestra are the Deep Field Mobile App and The Virtual Choir. The Deep Field App is a phone application that, when triggered by the audience, creates an indeterminate polyphony of shimmering textures playing from the audience’s phones, redefining the conventional barriers between performers and audiences. The application is instructed to be triggered at m. 216 proceeding the DD section and remains until the conclusion of the piece.

The addition of Virtual Choir 5 was a retrospective addition to the work after the music was set to 59 Productions & Space Telescope Science Institute’s Deep Space film. Virtual Choir 5 was composed of 8,000 singers from 120 countries, between the ages of 4 and 47, specifically for the Deep Field film. The choir begins at the climax of the work at m. 219, and approximately 01:19:25:00 of the film and remains until the conclusion of the piece. In accordance with his physical demonstrations of the acoustical properties in the universe within his pitch material, Eric Whitacre makes the technological aspect integral to the musical experience - making the “Earth’s Choir” section of the piece literally Earth’s choir with both the in-concert Deep Field app and the addition of Virtual Choir 5 in the final film and recording.

Eric Whitacre’s Deep Field prioritized musical imperatives; the pitch material physically representing the natural physical world, the form demonstrating the story of the Hubble Telescope, and the integration of the audience in the section about the Earth, and consequently the audience (“Earth’s Choir”). These imperatives removed the distance between the inspiration and subject of the piece and the piece itself. Deep Field, through the imperative integration of audience interactivity and technological tools, narrative structure, and an engagement with contemporary compositional aesthetics, audibly represents the vastness, importance, and the significance of the “Deep Field” image.

Carson Zuck,

May 2nd, 2025