But other than those few words and traditions, for the lost goatskin-wearing natives, Columbus’s arrival heralded the end of language, culture and time. Within two years of the explorer’s stopover, the Spaniards had colonized the islands and eradicated the Guanche, selling the survivors as white slaves on the Continent. What remains of them today are some of their names, like Teide, and words for some of the flowers that grow only along its rocky ridges.

After Columbus, the great German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt landed here in the 18th century and explored the islands, identifying one of the four cold water currents in the world drifting past the islands, which partly accounts for the near-perfect weather. The sky is literally cloudless 90 percent of the year.

While one side of Tenerife is gray rubble, the islands are mostly fertile, producing kiwi, bananas, mangoes, apples, tobacco and wine. Tenerife is filled with microclimates, green toward the north and barren to the south. In winter, it is possible to swim on the beaches and, an hour later, ascend the volcano and stand in three feet of snow.

The islands’ bounty and idyllic — and strategic — location made them a colonial prize by the 18th century, and it was here that the Spaniards shot off Admiral Horatio Nelson’s right arm with a cannon while defending Tenerife against the British Navy in 1797. He survived and went home with a condolence prize of casks of sweet Canarian wine, for which the British developed a taste that has not abated to this day. George Washington supposedly toasted the revolution with a glass of it.

For modern-day American visitors, the Canary Islands resemble the Caribbean, but possess facilities and characteristics of Europe — hospitals, low crime, relatively high standard of living, Spanish culture and healthy, delicious food (great tapas, olive oil, indigenous white goat cheese and a local delicacy, “wrinkled potatoes” boiled in salted water until the water evaporates). But the chief difference between Tenerife and, say, Aruba or the Bahamas is the island’s role in international space endeavors.

Dr. Israelian conceived Starmus, the island’s science and rock festival in 2011, and its name is short for “star music.” The concept of music from stars — unlike the medieval “music of the spheres” — actually has some basis in science and Dr. Israelian has made a study of it.

“When the first sound waves were detected in stars, about 10 years ago, I realized this whole new branch of astronomy was starting,” he said. “We have tools to detect those sound waves. They are low frequency, infra-sounds, the timbre is different, but I can take the sound … and I can move it to our domain, so we can hear it. It’s playing the piano, 10 octaves down.”