1:30 The European lute is a descendent of the Arabic Oud that traveled west during the time of the Crusades. The lute was similar in its pear shape and a rounded back made of separate strips of wood. During the Renaissance, the lute became the most popular instrument in the Western world. It was the instrument of kings and queens, and a symbol of the magic and power of music. Lute was heard in the theatre as incidental music in Shakespeare plays and in pubs and street corners, playing the popular tunes of the day. Galileo played the lute, and his father and younger brother performed on and composed for the lute. Although Vincenzio Galilei, Galileo’s father, cautioned Galileo from becoming a mathematician due to the low salary of such a vocation, his extensive experiments with tuning where Galileo acted as his assistant most likely impressed upon the young scientist the value of experimentation.

4:20 The aria “Dalle gelose mie” from the opera La Calisto by Francesco Cavalli (a student of Claudio Monteverdi) is a lament by Juno, the wife of Jove (Jupiter) about his rampant philandering. Jupiter sees the nymph Callisto, a follower of Diana, and seduces her. Callisto is turned into a bear at the command of the jealous Juno; but she is brought up to the heavens by Jove to spend eternity at his side.

10:00 In addition to being known for his discoveries about planetary motion, Johannes Kepler gave melodies to each of the known planets from his time. While calculating the mathematics of the planets’ movements through space, Kepler realized that they were showing the same ratios as the ratios determined in music when orbiting around the sun. Each planet has a time in its orbit when it is closest to the sun, as well as a time when farthest away from the sun. The ratios between these two numbers is close to 2 to 3. When a vibrating string is divided into thirds, and two thirds of it is plucked, it produces a note that is called a perfect fifth in musical terms. Kepler discovered that the planets were exhibiting all of the ratios found in music, including octaves. By their movements they were mathematically expressing both major and minor scales.

11:35 The theorbo (also called archlute or chitarrone) developed in Italy at the end of the sixteenth-century as an instrument to accompany singers in the first operas. The Florentine Camerata (of which Vincenzio Galilei was a member) desired to re-create Greek tragedy through music, and the theorbo offered a solid low chordal accompaniment that would not interfere with the audibility of text being sung in recitative and arias. The theorbo player is usually reading from the system called basso continuo, or figured bass - a type of musical accompaniment that is partially improvised. The accompanist is given a bass line of single notes, with numerical figures above indicating or suggesting what type of chord to play. The theorbo is a member of the lute family, but can have anywhere from 11 to 19 strings, and has three intricately carved sound holes or ‘roses’, whereas the lute only has one.

16:45 The House of the Redeemer was formerly the Edith Fabbri mansion. She was the daughter of Margaret Louis Vanderbilt Shepard, and the townhouse was a wedding gift to her daughter and son-in-law, Ernesto Fabbri. The interior was decorated by Ernesto’s brother Egisto Fabbri, and designed in the Italian Renaissance revival style by architect-of-record Grosvenor Attebury. The library is one of the main attractions of the mansion, and dates back to the early 1600s in the Duchy of Urbino, Italy. It was built by the last duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II della Rovere. The library was one of the cultural jewels of Urbino, and filled with a variety of books on a vast range of topics. The duke, with no heirs, left the duchy in care of the Pope. In 1657, Pope Alexander VII had all of the books removed and taken to Rome and installed in the Vatican library. The citizens of Urbino were outraged, believing that a keystone of their cultural heritage had been stolen from them. The library was sold in the late nineteenth century. During WWI, Egisto Fabbri had the shelves and other fixtures shipped across the ocean, using two ships to transport them, and they were installed in the Fabbri mansion. In 1949, Edith Shepard (she divorced Ernesto in 1923) started the idea of turning the mansion into a retreat house. Eventually a board of trustees was formed, and the House of the Redeemer is now a religious and spiritual retreat, or ‘a place apart’ on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

17:30 Barbara Strozzi (1619 – 1677) is the only woman composer of our project who was not a nun. Adopted by poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi (who was most likely her biological father), Barbara was afforded a very special upbringing for a 17th-century woman, growing up in a household frequented by musicians, writers, poets and composers who were the greatest artistic minds of their age. Giulio supported Barbara’s musical talents, and arranged lessons in composition for her with Francesco Cavalli (composer of La Calisto). Barbara never married, but had a long-term relationship with a Venetian nobleman, Giovanni Paolo Vidman, which resulted in 3, possibly 4, children. Two of her daughters entered a convent (as did Galileo’s two daughters) and a son became a monk. Barbara’s volume of work was such that she was considered to be the most prolific composer – man or woman – of printed secular vocal music in Venice in the mid-seventeenth century. There are 8 volumes of her songs, with more than half for the soprano voice. Her volume of madrigals for 2 to 5 voices, op. 1 (1644) was dedicated to Vittoria della Rovere, a duchess in Tuscany who happened to be the granddaughter of Francesco Maria II della Rovere, the last duke of Urbino and original owner of the library in House of the Redeemer.

18:15 Galileo was not only the father of modern science, but the father of recording data. A series of his drawings of observations of the moons of Jupiter that documented their positions on different dates are positioned next to video of the planet and its satellites recorded in similar positions.

36:11 This film of the transit of Venus, when it appeared as a small, dark spot passing across the face of the Sun, was filmed by Marc Wagnon on June 5, 2012 from our Manhattan rooftop. Due to the Venus’ orbit being tilted relative to Earth’s, their line-up with the sun only happens four times every 243 years. The next transit of Venus viewing will be in December, 2117.

37:30 This video of the diamond ring and full eclipse was filmed on August 21, 2017 in Mackay, Idaho. The next North American total solar eclipse will occur on April 8, 2024.

41:15 the art of ornamenting musical passages and single notes probably goes back centuries, as it is a form of improvisation. The only western-trained classical musicians who learn this practice today are organists, who may need to extend a song to coordinate with the length of time a priest may take to get from point A to B, or to time a choir procession. The Baroque period in both music and art saw an explosion of this form, in ‘decorating’ a melody, and adding meaning to the text. Giulio Caccini, among other composers during this period, wrote treatises on how to color, emphasize and otherwise embellish a text with the voice.

46:45 Galileo’s telescope was modeled after telescopes produced in other parts of Europe that could magnify objects three times, but Galileo’s could magnify objects twenty times. Still a far cry from what we are able to see today, Galileo was able to observe the four major satellites of Jupiter and the moon through his telescope.

47:30 Galileo’s observations of the phases of Venus, which are similar to the Earth’s Moon, gave evidence that Venus orbited the sun and not the Earth. Galileo’s collection of data is one of his most major contributions to modern science.

49:30 First Io, then Europa, followed by Calisto, and last but not least, Ganymede. Discovered by Galileo in January, 1610, he named them the ‘Medicean planets’, after his patrons, the important Medici family. He referred to the moons as Jupiter I, II, III, and IV, and were called as such until the mid-nineteenth century, when they were given their godly names, and collectively dubbed ‘the Galilean Moons’ in Galileo’s honor.

51:40 First Light images from the James Webb Space Telescope: Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 (Webb’s First Deep Field); Stephan’s Quintet; Southern Ring planetary nebula (aka NGC 3132); and NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula

52:40 An airplane view of Mauna Kea and its observatories on the island of Hawai’i

54:20 The opera L’Arianna was composed in 1607-1608, and is the second opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was first performed on May 28, 1608, as part of musical festivities in celebration of a royal wedding at the court of the Duke of Mantua. All of the music has been lost apart from the extended recitative, Ariadne’s Lament. It survives since Monteverdi published several different versions of the piece himself. The piece became influential in musical work and was widely imitated; the ‘expressive lament’ became an important part of Italian opera for much of the seventeenth century.

57:30 Soda Lake is a shallow, alkali endorheic lake in the Carrizo Plain of southeastern San Luis Obispo County, California. It is one of the largest alkali wetlands remaining in California, and supports fairy and brine shrimp, as well as migratory and nesting birds.

1:04:00 The seventeenth-century Italy saw the blossoming of educational opportunities for women, as well as an increase in their intellectually creative activities, the fruits of which can today be traced back to individual named authors. While not all girls trained in musical composition became nuns, the life of an upper-class nun afforded a woman the leisure to learn and pursue music at the same level as her fathers and brothers outside the walls. Since entering a convent was the best solution for protecting unmarried women, quite a large portion of the female population found themselves cloistered. In 1631, for example, almost fourteen percent of the women of the city of Bologna lived in convents. Young girls who eventually took the veil spent their entire lives inside the convent walls. Born in 1600 and 1601, Virginia and Livia Galilei entered the convent of San Matteo near Florence in 1613. Our ensemble is inspired by Dava Sobel’s book, Galileo’s Daughter, which is based on the letters of the eldest daughter, Virginia, who assumed the name Suor Maria Celeste. Devoted to her father, she wrote to him quite often in her short life, and provided comfort and support during his trial for heresy.

1:07:15 Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana was an Italian composer, organist, singer and nun. She entered the Camaldolese convent in Bologna in 1598. Her works are influenced by stile moderno music, especially the works of Claudio Monteverdi.

1:09:40 On July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured a faraway planet and its moon under the brilliance of Saturn’s rings. It’s a distance of just under 900 million miles, but Earth shines bright among the many stars in the sky.

1:11:20 The W.M. Keck Observatory houses the two-telescope astronomical observatory at an elevation of 4,145 meters near the summit of Mauna Kea. The original Keck I telescope began use in 1993; Keck II saw first light in October 1996. Mauna Kea’s flat shape, gentle winds, high altitude and low humidity make it a perfect site for astronomical observation.