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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…
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…
Mily Balakirev
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…
Jan Sibelius
Nielsen and Sibelius This course involved comparing and contrasting the careers and music of two great Scandinavian contemporaries. Both were born in 1865, Sibelius gave up composing in 1931, the year of Nielsen’s death. The course was based round their magnificent symphonies but explored their whole contribution to C20th music. I ran this course at…
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…
Music composition
I wrote my first work when I was five. It was for chime bars and Mrs Distin called it “William’s Tune”. This was 1963 and I think she was very surprised that a five year old would be able to come up with an original tune. I had played all the ones she had given…
