A History of Music and the Stars: Talk and Astrolabe Workshop NEW

From antiquity to modern musical compositions, learn about how people have tried to see, hear and
dance to the music of the spheres. We will explore the theories of the 6th century BCE philosopher and geometrician
Pythagoras, the Babylonians, the Chaldaeans, the Persians, the Roman Stoic versions of celestial harmonies,
Ptolemy's system of interlocking circular orbits, refinements of Islamic Golden Age astronomers and
mathematicians, the mystical applications of these theories from Plato and Cicero to Sufi mystics and whirling
Dervishes, and Kepler's mystical yet scientifically revolutionary study, Harmonia Mundi, Harmony of the Universe.
We will also examine how these ideas resulted in the development by Islamic scientists of the earliest astrolabes for
tracking celestial movements--and create our own working astrolabes and use them!