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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…
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…
Ralph Vaughan Williams
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…
Florence Price
Florence Price – Composer and Pioneer A child prodigy making her concert debut at 4, the same age as Mozart, Florence Price graduated with 2 diplomas at the age of 19. She was a professional organist, concert pianist and teacher, heading the music department at Clark University, Georgia at 23. Of her 300 compositions her…
Shakespeare and Music
Shakespeare and Music I ran this course jointly with Rudy Sabor. Taking a different play each week with students giving an outline of the plot, examining the contemporary music and music inspired by it by later composers for tone poems, operas, songs and other works. I covered Anthony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King…
Antonio Vivaldi
Vivaldi and Venice This study was part of a longer course studying the history and culture of Venice. I started with an outline of Vivaldi’s life and career giving musical examples of his operas, choral works and concerti. The afternoon was spent with a more detailed analysis of the Seasons and a full examination of…
