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Shakespeare and the Classical World
Shakespeare and the Classical World This course was held at the City Lit on Saturday 11th November 2017. It was repeated online during the pandemic over three Friday evenings on 5th, 12th and 19th February 2021. A quarter of Shakespeare’s major works were based on stories from the Classical World and have influenced our view…
Zoltan Kodaly
Kodaly and Budapest This study was part of a longer course studying the history and culture of Budapest. We concentrated on Kodaly’s choral works and how they fitted in with the tradition of Hungarian choral works initiated by his greatest predecessor, Liszt. We compared Liszt’s Hungarian Coronation Mass with Kodaly’s similarly celebratory Buda Castle Te…
Benjamin Britten
Britten, Walton and Tippett Three of the greatest British composers of the twentieth century had very different attitudes to music but all attempted to write in many different media such as opera, choral, orchestral and chamber music. Among the operas studied were Midsummer Marriage, King Priam, Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Albert Herring,…
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…
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart’s Finale This was a detailed examination of Mozart’s last 12 months in which he wrote some of his greatest works (including the Clarinet Concerto, the Magic Flute, La Clemenza di Tito, Ave Verum Corpus, the Requiem, the last Piano Concerto and the last two String Quintets) but struggled financially and professionally. I ran this…
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…
