Emergent Universe Oratorio Composer Sam Guarnaccia
Set Design Visual Artist Cameron Davis with Animator William Tipper
Librettists Sam & Paula Guarnaccia, Cameron Davis, John Cimino
About the Oratorio:
The Emergent Universe Oratorio (EUO) seeks to provide a context for audiences to embrace our shared human belonging within the Web of Life, animating our sense of inter-responsibility in the creation of a flourishing future for all.
Through choral, orchestral, and narrative reading, with visual set design, the EUO seeks to bring the integrative and transformative power of the story of the Universe’s origin, evolution and the emergence of life to our present ecological and civilizational crisis.
About the Set Design:
The video animation uses details from over 20 paintings by Cameron Davis. Their abstractions of plant patterns with moving elements created in partnership with Animator William Tipper, suggest a living Earth and Universe: core to the Oratorio content.
Albany ProMusica July 18, 2025, Zankel Hall, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
Concert Recording:
https://samguarnaccia.com/2025/10/emergent-universe-oratorio-_-evolutionary-performance/
Selected Video clips: Movement #5, Life’s Emergence https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qptckvcg2wq9mck0kjjey/05-Recit-Life-s-Emergence.mp4?rlkey=kzxa6og8wmtbvzx69vitzg8gf&dl=0
Movement #17, To See a World https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fao3wtmoz13tvhydvj2yd/17-To-See-a-World.mp4?rlkey=nfkjdgg1dv2vdf39jloepxxi5&dl=0
Movement #4, Earth Rise Amen https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/76bp9drll500qhat73xn5/04-Earth-Rise-AMEN.mp4?rlkey=8afoysma2sparsor0eparqe3h&e=1&dl=0
Movement #6, Planetary Presence https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/eoc95pmr1gm85hd1u9dep/09-Recit-Planetary-Presence-Human-Emergence.mp4?rlkey=clspvyzya7cs5llmu5iupa0bu&e=1&dl=0
Animation: William Tipper https://tipperink.artstation.com/
Cinematography: Ben W. Bach https://www.benwbach.com/
Photography: Lindsay Ramonjack https://raymondjack.com/
Creative Technology Consultant: Fletcher Bach https://fletcherbach.com/
Video Consultant: Myles Jewell & Intern Danshi Antinoph mylesdavidjewell.com
Project History:
Since 2010 the core team, Sam & Paula Guarnaccia and Cameron Davis, has been engaged with writing the story of the universe inspired by the work of Thomas Berry, in consultation with Journey of the Universe authors and film producers Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, and Author Cosmologist Brian Swimme. The Oratorio was originally performed at the Breeding Barn at Shelburne Farms, Vermont, in 2013 with 12 large scale paintings by Davis. The Oratorio with paintings went on to be performed in Philadelphia & Cleveland. For more project history: www.samguarnaccia.com
The Libretto
During the pandemic, 2020 - 2022, Sam Guarnaccia, Paula Guarnaccia, Cameron Davis and Creative Leaps International CEO, John Cimino rewrote the libretto to update the changing science and to reflect the increasing social, ecological, and civilizational urgencies.
KOSMOS Journal, The Art of Belonging, Emergent Universe Oratorio, Cultivating a Unitive Mindset, by Sam Guarnaccia, Cameron Davis, Paula Guarnaccia https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/emergent-universe-oratorio-2/
Vol. 25, Issue 1
Funded in part by:
Vermont Arts Council Artist Development Grant, 2024
Thomas Berry Foundation Grant, 2024
New Perennials Project, Middlebury College, grant, 2022
University of Vermont Retired Faculty Research Award, 2023
University of Vermont Retired Faculty Research Award, 2024
MANY generous individual contributions!
Bios
Sam Guarnaccia, MFA, Guitar
Sam Guarnaccia is a composer, classical guitarist, scholar, and founder/director of Sam Guarnaccia Music (SGM) www.samguarnaccia.com. He studied privately at the Royal Conservatory of Madrid and received a Master of Fine Arts in Guitar performance from the California Institute of the Arts. He created and, for ten years, taught and directed the guitar program of the University of Denver’s renowned Lamont School of Music. He has also taught and instituted programs at Middlebury College and the University of Vermont, as Spanish scholar, player/performer, and composer.
Cameron Davis, MFA Painting
University of Vermont Senior Lecturer, Emerita, Cameron Davis retired in May 2023 after 34 years of teaching with the Department of Art & Art History. Davis was also an Environmental Program affiliate and Environmental Humanities Fellow. She taught Painting, Drawing, Perspectives on Making, and various courses on art, ecology, and community. Davis locates her studio practice, through subject and process, within the framework of perceiving ecologically; exhibits and is in collections nationally. Davis co-authored the 2022 rewrite of the Emergent Universe Oratorio Libretto. cdavis@uvm.edu
Paula Guarnaccia, M.Ed., Creative Partner
Paula Guarnaccia is a creative partner with Sam Guarnaccia, composer, and Cameron Davis, visual artist, for the Emergent Universe Oratorio (EUO) Project. She has provided significant intellectual and emotional content for both the EUO libretto and music. She was instrumental in the planning the three previous EUO performances in Vermont, Cleveland, and Philadelphia.
Paula’s extensive background in administration has proven invaluable for the Emergent Universe Oratorio (EUO) Project. With twenty-five years of administrative experience in both higher education and healthcare, she has had the skills needed to move the project forward. During her career, she was the Assistant Dean for Administration and Finance at the University of Vermont, College of Arts & Sciences. In addition, she was also Administrative Director for the University of Vermont College of Medicine Health Network. Currently, she is on the Board of the American Teilhard Association where she serves as Treasurer.
John Cimino, Creative Leaps International
John is president and CEO of Creative Leaps International, The Learning Arts, Icarus Musicworks and Associated Solo Artists. Educated at Rensselaer Polytechnic institute (biology & physics), The State university of New York at Albany (learning theory), and the Manhattan and Julliard Schools of Music (music & voice), Cimino holds a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective and works across multiple disciplines dedicated to learning and human development. He serves as a consultant and advisor to university engaged in interdisciplinary reorganization with a primary focus on creativity, leadership, and arts-mediated approaches to pedagogy.
As a consultant and champion of the arts in business and professional life, Cimon has brought his “Concerts of Ideas” and other innovative programs into projects of the White House, the Center for Creative Leadership, the Council for Excellence in Government, the District of Columbia’s Center for excellence in Municipal Management, and the leadership training programs in dozens of Fortune 500 companies as well as numerous universities and professional organizations worldwide.
Cimino, in partnership with the team, also spent the last two years co-rewriting the Oratorio Libretto recitatives. https://creativeleaps.org/about-us/people/john-j-cimino-jr
EMERGENT UNIVERSE ORATORIO – Libretto - 2025
The Great Flaring Forth
In the great silence –
The first stirring of a shimmering Universe.
In the darkness of unbounded possibility,
Our Universe about to flare forth,
To rise into being,
Shaping the contours of the emerging cosmos.
Immanent within the chaos of primordial particles—
The impulse of matter to bond,
The promise of atoms and galaxies,
Suns and planets, oceans, rivers,
Butterflies, trees, and songs of love.
In the great silence …
Ineffable mystery…
Of the first breath.
Energy – Space – Time – Mass – Light
The dawning of our universe—
Summoning forth all that we know,
All that we are,
All that may ever be.
And…asking of us now ---
How do we embrace this mystery?
How do we live this story?
How shall we know and love this Earth?
Gravity’s Law
How surely gravity’s law,
Strong as an ocean current,
Takes hold of even the smallest thing
And pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing —
Each stone, blossom, child —
Is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
Push out beyond what we each belong to
For some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
To earth’s intelligence
We could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
In knots of our own making.
And struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
To learn from the things,
Because they are in God’s heart;
They have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
To fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
Before it can fly.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows
Emanating Brilliance of Stars
More than a trillion galaxies paint the heavens –
Each with countless stars—
Flickering emanations of the Great Flaring Forth.
What gave birth to all this beauty?”
What is this music at the heart of the Universe?
Spiraling galaxies are wombs of creativity,
Where new stars burst into brilliance.
The stars ignite, flourish, age and die—
And in their dying, the largest of them collapse,
Exploding as supernovas,
Spewing forth new, heavier elements into the vastness of space.
The very atoms comprising our bodies –
Carbon, oxygen, magnesium, iron—
Woven through every leaf, feather, hand, and eye –
Are formed—for the first time,
In the spectacular explosion of perishing stars.
In one great arm of our Milky Way Galaxy
An immense fragment of molecular cloud collapsed—
Its center flaring into our Sun.
Poised between implosion and explosion,
The new sun drew into its embrace precious grains of stardust,
Coalescing them into a necklace of unique planets:
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune –
And Earth, a bountiful Bearer of Life…
For countless millennia, we humans have looked with awe into the night sky
Transfixed by the majesty of the heavens –
And found there, nourishment, meaning, guidance.
WE are children of the Great Flaring Forth –
And—our ANCESTORS…are the STARS!
EarthRise AMEN
In the beginning
Was the dream,
EarthRise
Amen
-Thomas Berry
Life’s Emergence
Across the broad field of space and deep time,
Star systems and their planets…
Have raced through gravity’s ethereal ocean
Suspended in light and darkness.
One planet – a mix of
Churning seas, roiling magma,
And charged atmosphere –
Breathes into being
Minute single-celled organisms…
And so—becomes a Living Earth.
As the first fragile membrane formed,
Imparting to the cell its boundary of identity,
There arose within—the miracle of DNA—
Molecular encoding—
Combining, recombining, remembering.
From emerging PATTERNS of adaptation and invention,
The cell now becoming the first locus of perception, sensation, action —
From which arose every other living thing.
Spirals of memory are mirrored in the unfolding fern,
The spider web, the nautilus, the snail.
As these earliest forms
Made their home upon burgeoning Earth,
Some of them, responding to the energy of the Sun,
Turned toward the light —
Inaugurating the wonder of photosynthesis.
Sunlight, now food for the planet!
Algae, fungi, mosses,
Slime molds, sporophytes, the slithering fishes,
Frogs, turtles,
Every species of bird
Stretching their bright wings across the sky.
And the skinny shrew,
Small, warm blooded, among
The first of the beautiful mammals.
LIFE!
Through life Earth awakened to itself AND to the Universe.
From the Flaring Forth – to galaxies – to stars – to Living Earth,
Ahhhh ...
Because—nothing is itself without everything else.
God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Passion of Animals
It was four - BILLION - years - ago -
Single-celled life appeared,
Enveloping Earth,
Specializing, co-mingling,
Combining and cooperating through symbiosis,
Surrendering to larger complexities,
in a continuing creative drama.
A mere six hundred MILLION years ago… ANIMALS emerged!
From those first single cells—to cell communities—coevolving
Into an immeasurable profusion of diverse beings.
And from that awesome well of creativity, there arose life forms
With unique powers of movement,
Colonizing new territories,
And bringing forth myriad multiform creatures.
Pervading air, sea, and land,
They gifted the planet with dazzling senses,
And—new instinctual, emotional life.
Animals awakened Earth
With symphonies of sound, smell, taste, and touch,
Their passion igniting an explosion of consciousness.
Exuberant play --- practice for the high stakes of life and death ---
Evoked ever more inventive behaviors
Magnifying the emergent creativity.
ONE DAY,
Nature would produce a mammal
With a prolonged period of intense curiosity,
A being with a passion for learning, creativity—and WONDER.
Musical Interlude: “Turning”
Emergence of the Human - Planetary Presence
Our ancestors emerged in wonder:
Curious, inventive, playful.
Every place we went became seeded with human presence.
Meeting, mixing, mingling.
Wandering tribes exploring, colliding, inventing,
Learning the ways of others,
Forging communities, alliances, rivalries.
In time, language and symbol emerged,
Illuminating an inner landscape,
And creating another universe within.
For the first time, human possibility burst beyond biological coding.
Human culture became a second DNA,
Changing the face of Earth,
And transforming the dynamics of evolution.
Yet, despite our inheritance of stunning creativity,
We were, and are, still – a juvenile species,
Unsure of ourselves, too sure of ourselves,
Reckless and self-absorbed in our powers.
We live on a wounded planet now.
We have ravaged the air, the rivers, the oceans, the soils,
Decimating the living systems on which all life depends.
We are in danger of losing our only home.
Yet, we too, BELONG here!
Entwined in the fabric of our
Unfolding Cosmos,
We are dreaming animals,
On a wave of ever more conscious evolution–
Dream-making animals,
Awakening—
To find ourselves … HERE.
Cascade: Lament
I.
1st Reader:
Increasingly, human activity threatens animal well-being.
Tens of thousands of species are declining; others are already gone.
2nd Reader:
Thin-Spined Porcupine, Polar Bear, Bengal Tiger, Hazel Dormouse.
1st Reader:
Bat populations are overwhelmed by disease and die in their hibernaculum each winter. Other winged animals fall into peril.
2nd Reader:
Little brown bat, Bay Checkerspot, Fender’s Blue, Giant Ibis, Forest Owlet.
1st Reader:
The skin of amphibians is pervious to the chemical environments around them --- they are some of life’s most vulnerable.
2nd Reader:
California red-legged frog, Puerto Rican crested toad, Blue Spotted salamander, Anderson’s Crocodile newt.
1st Reader:
Honeybee colonies mysteriously collapse and vanish from their hives, while native pollinators around the world are lost.
2nd reader
Hawaiian yellow faced bee,
Salt Creek Tiger beetle, Idaho Stonefly,
Black-Breasted Puffleg Hummingbird
1st Reader:
Increasingly, human activity is unraveling our natural systems endangering the foundations of life’s intricate web.
Trees, in forests across the world, struggle to adapt.
2nd Reader:
Hinton’s Oak, African Blackwood, Monkey Puzzle, Four-Petal Paw-Paw, Sugar Maple.
1st Reader:
Glaciers are being lost --- receding and evaporating into the atmosphere.
2nd Reader:
Greenland Ice Sheet, Gangotri Glacier, Muir Glacier, Antarctica
1st Reader
Coral reefs are one of the most bio-diverse habitats on Earth. Many face extinction by mid-century.
2nd Reader:
Great Barrier Reef, Florida Keys, Caribbean coral reefs, Surin Islands, Seychelles.
III.
1st reader
Increasingly, human activity is
unraveling social systems inflamed by ecological and climate disruption,
Threatening civilizational breakdown.
2nd reader
Loss of tolerance, contested cultural and institutional resilience, diminished mental wellbeing,
fragmented communities, fractured peace.
1st reader
We have legalized theft of the future by
our shortsighted policies.
2nd reader
Beacons of democratic hope around the world
are faltering or being extinguished.
Measures of freedom are being downgraded or lost.
1st reader
For these desecrations and for all life, going or gone forever,
We share our lament.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
Rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
Of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
Waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
Time’s Topography -John Elder
Morningside Cathedral
Whale song from
the deep of the sea.
Wolf cry from the forest.
Heartbeat
of a planet.
This cry
Our Revelation
As the sun
Sinks lower
In the sky
Over a wounded
World.
And the healing
Of the wound
Is there in
A single cry
A throat opened wide
For the wild
Sacred sound…
Hovering over
The darkening earth,
Beseeching humankind
To bring back the Sun,
To let the flowers
Bloom in the meadows
The rivers run
Through the hills
And to let
The Earth and all
Her living creatures
Live their wild fierce
Serene and abundant life.
-Thomas Berry
Emerging Earth Community
This is our moment—
The Universe is holding its breath
Waiting for us to take our place.
Could it be OUR destiny to journey into the depths of things,
To question, to ponder, to re-imagine,
To know that our lives
Require nothing less
Than re-inventing what it means to be human
Within the living web of Earth?
Could it be we are being invited
to learn the language of mountains,
Rivers, and trees,
the language of birds,
All the animals and insects —
The winds, soils, and seas,
their living networks,
And yes, the language of the stars?’
Are they not the languages of our kin?
Can we open ourselves to these voices –
…To this deep belonging,
with every living being?
How then, will we choose to live?
Awakening
"We are beings
In whom the universe
Shivers in wonder at itself —
The space where earth dreams."
- Brian Thomas Swimme, Mary Evelyn Tucker
Transformation
As never before…
Humanity is invited to SEE with new eyes,
To FEEL what- is -not -yet.
As never before…
Our Awakening to the present moment is to realize
What-we-do-matters!
Who-we-are-matters!
Creatures of imagination…
With powers of language, metaphor, and empathy—
We can experience ourselves as one with all of life —
Immersed in the moment by moment unfolding,
Evoking felt response-ability for our world
As we live our lives forward into mystery—
Charged with uncertainty—yet boundless possibility.
Knowing life is regenerative, creative and intelligent,
Can we see beyond our present crisis.
That we are in a metamorphosis
of conscious evolution?
What -we- do- matters!
Who-we-are-matters!
Unfolding, refolding back into the Whole of Life.
Love is the desire to give life, and life seeks more life.
The whole Cosmos IS that desire—
The ceaseless Emergence of a Living Universe!!
Can you FEEL it beckoning?
The luminous horizon — of a world in transformation?
17EUO-To See a World
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
- William Blake
CAM TAKE somewhere else
MARCH 12, 2025 11am ALMOST FINAL NOT the latest
As never before…
Humanity is invited to SEE with new eyes,
To FEEL what-is-not-yet.
As never before…
Our Awakening to the present moment is to realize
What-we-do-matters!
Who-we-are-matters!
Creatures of imagination…
With powers of language, metaphor, and, empathy—
We can experience ourselves as one with all of life —
Immersed in the moment by moment unfolding,
Evoking felt response-ability for our world
As we live our lives forward into mystery (Kaufman)
Charged with uncertainty–yet boundless possibility.
“Life is Inherently regenerative, creative, and intelligent” (Capra)
Can we see beyond our present crisis.
That we are perhaps in a metamorphosis —
A process of conscious evolution?
What-we do-matters!
Who-we-are-matters!
Unfolding, refolding back into the Whole of Life.
Love is the desire to give life, and life seeks more life.
The whole Cosmos IS that desire,
The ceaseless Emergence of a Living Universe!!
Can you FEEL it beckoning?
The luminous horizon — of a world in transformation?
150 words
OLD NOTES: march 12, 2025
Humanity is invited to SEE with new eyes,
To FEEL what-is-not-yet.
As never before…
Our Awakening to the present moment is to realize
What-we-do-matters!
Creatures of imagination…
With powers of language, metaphor, and, empathy—
We can experience ourselves as one with all of life —
Intimately participating/engaged/immersed/enthralled/entranced in the moment by moment unfolding,
Evoking felt response-ability for our world
“As we live our lives forward into mystery,(kaufmann)
Charged with uncertainty–yet boundless possibility.
Can we see beyond our present crisis.
That we are perhaps “in-between”
— A metamorphosis –
In a process of conscious evolution? (Currivan)
Within life’s regenerative, creative, intelligent networks.
“Life organizes itself in networks —
Inherently regenerative, creative, and intelligent” (Capra)
What-we do-matters!
Who-we-are-matters!
Unfolding, refolding back into the Whole of Life.
Love is the desire to give life, and life seeks more life.
The whole Universe Cosmos IS that desire… (Weber)
The ceaseless Emergence of a Living Universe!!
Can you FEEL it beckoning?
The luminous horizon — of a world in transformation?
("I am life that wants to live, surrounded by life that wants to live"-Albert Schweitzer)
Extras earlier drafts below:
As never before…
Our awakening humanity invites us to SEE with new eyes,
As we face the present and ponder our choices.
What gifts do we bring to this moment?
We are creatures of imagination-
We can envision a world
far beyond the present crisis.
Through empathy,
We can experience ourselves as one with ALL of life.
With our gifts of speech and metaphor –
We can awaken a greater genius than our own.
These gifts enable us to enter into the depths of things,
Igniting our felt response-ability for our world.
…Love is the desire to give life.
And the whole Universe IS that desire…
We are sowing the seeds of our future now!
What we do matters!
Who we are matters!
“The future enters into us,
To transform itself in us, long before it happens.”-1
Can you FEEL it beckoning?
Can you imagine this emergence? —
— A luminous horizon - of a world in transformation.
Recitative Life’s Emergence
Across the broad field of space and deep time,
Star systems and their planets…
Have raced through gravity’s ethereal ocean
Suspended in light and darkness.
One planet – a mix of
Churning seas, roiling magma,
And charged atmosphere –
Whispers into being
Tiny single-celled organisms…
And so—becomes a Living Earth.
As the first fragile membrane formed,
Imparting to the cell its boundary of identity, (Capra)
There arose within the cell the miracle of DNA—
Of molecular encoding—
Combining, recombining, remembering.
And out of this astounding fertility
Emerged PATTERNS of adaptation and invention,
The cell now becoming the first locus of perception, sensation, action —
Out of which arose every other living thing.
Spirals of memory are mirrored in the unfolding fern,
The spider web, the nautilus, the snail.
As these earliest forms
Made their home upon burgeoning Earth,
Some of them, responding to the energy of the Sun,
Turn toward the light —
Inaugurating the wonder of photosynthesis.
Sunlight, now food for the planet!
Algae, fungi, mosses,
Slime molds, sporophytes, the slithering fishes,
Frogs, turtles,
Every species of bird
Stretching their bright wings across the sky.
And the skinny shrew,
Small, warm blooded, among
The first of the beautiful mammals.
LIFE!
Through life Earth awakened to itself AND to the Universe.
From the Flaring Forth – to galaxies – to stars – to Living Earth,
Ahhhh ...
Because—nothing is itself without everything else. (2)