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Walmer Suite
Walmer Suite This suite of five short piano pieces were written or revised whilst I was teaching at a small school in Walmer, Kent. The pieces are all suitable for teaching piano techniques. I was the head of History at the school but also taught History of Music and Music Theory to the older pupils. …
Modest Mussorgsky
The Mighty Handful The lives and music of Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov examining how they came together and how their careers overlapped. In 1867 the critic Stasov wrote a review of the Pan-Slav concert organised by Mily Balakirev: “God grant that our Slavonic guests may never forget today’s concert; God grant that they…
Giacomo Puccini
Puccini and Verismo Opera A detailed studies of each of Puccini’s operas and a selection of his other works compared to the works of contemporaries. The course followed Puccini’s life chronologically from the poverty of his childhood when he was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps as a church composer, his student days when…
William and Mary
I first ran this course at Crayford Manor in January 2003 but the latest manifestation was on Saturday 14th March 2020 at the City Lit just before the great lockdown. Following the attempt by James II to re-establish Catholicism in Britain his daughter and son-in-law were invited to oust him to protect the Protestant church….
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…
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…
