Grisey's Le Noir de l'Etoile

"In 1967, a young astronomer detected in the heavens a rapidly varying radio signal, in the form of periodic impulses 1.3 seconds apart. The discovery caused a sensation. The impulses were so regular that for a while they were taken to be signals coming from extraterrestrial civilisations. Then astrophysicists revealed a truth that was just as surprising: the signals were being emitted by a pulsar, the fantastic compact residue created by the supernova explosions that long ago disintegrated the massive stars."
-Jean-Pierre Luminet, Astrophysicist at the Paris-Meudon Observatory
More than twenty years later, inspired by this discovery and those sounds, the composer G