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Mrs Eleanor Purce
From 1976 to 1980 I had piano lessons from Eleanor Purce at Keele University. She had been a pupil of the great Alfred Cortot and as his writing on music did not include his method she decided to write her own version of how she taught based on the wisdom he passed on to her. …
Orpheus – Life after Death
Orpheus – Life after Death Unlike other Greek Heroes Orpheus was basically peaceful. He braved the Underworld and was one of the Argonauts. Ever since he has been a major influence for artists and composers. This course was run at the City Lit on Saturday 3rd March 2018. We studied the Greek Myths surrounding Orpheus…
Robert Schumann
Schumann and Schumann This course examined the music and careers of Robert and Clara Schumann, how they were entwined and the influence on each other. The course was run thematically with the first week being an overall chronology and then each week concentrating on one type of music such as Piano Muisc, Songs, Choral, Orchestral…
Anton Bruckner
Bruckner – his life and works This course set out to try and raise the profile of a much underrated composer. An unassuming church organist, in many ways a most unlikely romantic hero, Bruckner did for the symphony and church music what Wagner did for opera and led the way to the revolutionary works of…
Gustav Holst
Vaughan Williams and Holst Two great friends who pioneered a new English style with varying success. Not just the composers of Greensleeves and the Planets, Vaughan Williams and Holst followed Elgar’s lead as two of the standard bearers of the English Musical Renaissance. Both were from Gloucestershire but they met as students at the Royal…
Johannes Brahms
Brahms and Bruch This was a comparative study of the two greatest German instrumental and choral composers of their day whose reputations have not fared equally well. Johannes Brahms and Max Bruch were two of the most celebrated composers in late nineteenth century Germany. Bruch predicted that his fame would fade as Brahms’s grew. Although…
