…innumerable stars, scattered in clusters

In 1609, Galileo Galilei climbed the tallest hill in Rome and looked into the night sky through an instrument of his own invention: the telescope. His initial glimpse into the cosmos led him to record that the heavens were draped with “innumerable stars, scattered in clusters.” This was the first discovery of that vast, sidereal array we now know as the Milky Way. Four hundred years later, I found myself on that same hilltop, writing music as a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. While there, I would often wake up before the sunrise and walk to my studio beneath the very same sky Galileo had observed so many centuries earlier. At these moments, when the city was still and the stars shone brightly, I would feel a deep connection to history, a special, timeless kinship with Galileo, and, above all, an urge to be productive with my allotted time. So, I decided to write an orchestra piece about the mysterious and expansive nature of both time and space, and found it fitting to use Galileo’s words as a title.