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Handel and Royalty
Handel fell in love with England on his first visit writing music for Queen Anne herself. He was reconciled with George I partly with his Water Music Suite and wrote the coronation music for George II. It is an examination of how closely his music and career was bound up with the British royal family…
Max Bruch
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…
William Walton
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,…
Clara Schumann
Schumann and Schumann This course was on 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,…
Hector Berlioz
Berlioz, his Life in Music An examination of his life and music using his own remarkable autobiography as a guide. Unlike many of his contemporaries such as Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt, Berlioz was not an infant prodigy. In fact he never mastered any instrument and always composed in silence away from the piano, an instrument…
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….
