Dan Lippel, Solo Guitar: “la Comète”

“The Sun King’s Cosmos” is a study of the unusually bright comets of 1664–65 and 1680–81, which appeared not only in the sky but also in ballets and theater, letters and early journalism, architecture and institutions, theology and literary style. Goldstein studies how these comets—considered at the time to be chaotic and without discernible form or pattern—organized curiosity, scrutiny, resistance and doubt during the reign of King Louis XIV in ...