Weird Studies Episode 219 – Composing the Cosmos, with Meredith Rigby
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Sep 23, 2026 
Meredith Rigby, a musicologist, educator, and writer, explores how 20th-century composers turned outer space into a realm of myth and mystery. They discuss recurring musical tropes of ascent, sirens and wordless cosmic voices, scientific wonder, Messiaen’s incarnational cosmos, Bergson’s enchantment, and how music makes the silent universe perceptible.
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The Musical Pattern That Makes Space Aspirational
- Meredith Rigby discovered a recurring space-fanfare trope linking low drones and upward brass leaps with aspiration, hope, and humanity’s reach beyond Earth.
- The pattern appears in Star Trek and other works as a musical question-and-response pointing toward the mysterious beyond.
Why Cosmic Music Keeps Reusing The Same Forms
- Repeated cosmic musical figures may arise through cultural diffusion, spontaneous rediscovery, or an underlying relationship between sound and existence.
- Meredith Rigby compares orchestral drones with the sacred Aum and Indian music’s continual return to a fundamental ground.
Wonder Cannot Be Transmitted
- Cyclical musical layers naturally evoke spheres, cosmic cycles, and mythic time, even without direct composer-to-composer influence.
- J.F. Martel argues that art can trigger discovery rather than transmit information, because wonder cannot simply be passed from person to person.
