Galileo in Rome

Winner of the Irving Lowens Award, from the Society for American Music, and of ASCAP Deems Taylor Award 1998 & 1999.

This is a comprehensive biography of perhaps the first important American woman composer, Amy Marcy Beach. She enjoyed an international reputation in the early 20th century, especially for her symphonies. In recent years there has been a great revival of interest in her work, and many of her compositions have been performed and recorded.New research shows the true reason why galileo was condemned. Galileo is one of a small group of thinkers who transformed Western culture. But to be at the forefront of ideas was a dangerous position to take at the turn of the sixteenth century, bringing the philosopher into constant conflict with the might of the curch. Galileo made six long visits to Rome in an attempt to get the church on his side. He was anxious to raise his profile in the Eternal City, where he spent some 500 days, meeting the pope, high-ranking ecclesiastics, and members of the literary establishment as well as other scientists. It offers a regorous, but easy-to-understand, account of what happened during Galileo's visit to Rome. In the end, he overplayed his hand and the outcome was his dramatic condemnation by the church. Based on extensive archive research, the author paint a far more complex picture of the actions and motivations of both sides than has been published before, and show how it is that Galileo's failure to impress the church has not prevented him from becoming one of the leading thinkers of the day.