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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…
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – The Black Mahler Best known for his youthful masterpiece Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, Coleridge-Taylor was considered by Elgar to be the most gifted composer of his generation. He was the composing son of a West African father and English mother. His “Hiawatha” trilogy became one of the most popular choral works in England….
Piotr Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky Whilst his contemporaries were torn between the traditionalists and the nationalists, Tchaikovsky tried to find a Third Way and succeeded in becoming the most popular composer Russia has ever produced. This course not only listened to his music but used videos of his ballets and operas to examine the dramatic genius of his ideas….
Ethel Smyth
Dame Ethel Smyth, Composer and Suffragette The remarkable life of a pioneer of women composers in Britain. All six of her operas were performed in her lifetime and her March of the Women was the battle cry of the Suffragettes. The course followed Ethel Smyth’s remarkable career from conventional middle class background through her musical…
Dmitri Shostakovich
Prokofiev and Shostakovich This course examined how two Russian composers came to terms with the constraints of living and working under the Soviet regime. Unlike their contemporaries, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, both Prokofiev and Shostakovich found ways to express their artistic integrity within the strict confines of Soviet Russia. They were both censored at times but…
Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes
Diaghilev This was a chronological examination of the great impresario’s touring opera and ballet company, particularly concentrating on the many works he commissioned from Stravinsky, Ravel, Satie, Prokofiev, De Falla, Poulenc, Milhaud and others. No one has done more to advance the development of music who was not themselves a composer or performer than the…
