Oort Cloud – Outer Space Organ Improvisations

Can a pipe organ sound like Outer Space electronic music? Though it is hard to believe it, yes, it can. The windchests provide air at constant and unfluctuating pressure. By operating a stop, and depressing a key, the organist opens the air chute to make the organ pipe sing.

But what happens if we try to fine-tune the airflow by using the mechanical organ key and stop action? The first of these organ improvisations were recorded on the W. Sauer organ in St. Catherine Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg and the second, on the Hugo Mayer organ in the Philharmonia of the city of Penza.

In the Hills Cloud improvisation, the organ is accompanied by the theremin, also played by Olesya Rostovskaya. Outer space is closer than it seems.

The Oort cloud is a theoretical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 au (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). It is divided into two regions: a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud (or Hills cloud) and a spherical outer Oort cloud.

Although no confirmed direct observations of the Oort cloud have been made, it may be the source of all long-period and Halley-type comets entering the inner Solar System, and many of the centaurs and Jupiter-family comets as well. The Oort cloud is thought to have developed after the formation of planets from the primordial protoplanetary disc approximately 4.6 billion years ago.