A piece for Newton Day: Jacques Gallot's Chaconne for Newton's comet

Hello subscribers!

I have made a music video for Christmas, or if you like, Newton Day (warning: I have very limited video editing skills, and unfortunately still limited lute playing skills). But with those caveats in place, here it is. Enjoy!

Chaconne la comète is a musical composition by Jacques Gallot (1625-1695) that musically evokes on the baroque lute the splendor of a very bright comet. This was Kirch's comet, aka Newton's comet, aka the Great Comet of 1680, reaching its peak brightness on December 29, 1680.

What is notable for this comet is that its advent was predicted with a telescope. Gottfried Kirch, observing it, was able to calculate its trajectory. This made it possible for people to come out with their Jacob's staff and other amateur astronomical equipment, as we see in this painting by Lieve Verschuier showing the folk of Rotterdam, The Netherlands. I love this picture of people standing in the cold (it's the Little Ice Age) in late December and all looking up.

Isaac Newton was born on 25 December 1642 according to the Julian calendar that was still used when he was born and where he lived. So I thought it nice to post this piece today, on Christmas eve. Newton used the observation and path of the comet to test and verify Kepler's laws, using data from the astronomer John Flamsteed. Flamsteed proposed that two great comets observed in November and December in 1680 were the same body.

Newton first disagreed, but then changed his mind and agreed, and used Flamsteed's data without crediting him, that he had got access to thanks to Edmond Halley, much to Flamsteed's dismay. It just goes to show, the Newton-Leibniz dispute on who invented calculus was not the only scholarly credit controversy Isaac was embroiled in.

Also, if you have a suitable instrument and maybe just to admire how very economical a way to write music lute tablature is, here is the score: