Week of April 1, 2019 - The Ballad of East and West
“OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet…When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!“ -Rudyard Kipling. Borrowing this week's title from the Rudyard Kipling poem "The Ballad of East and West,” we’ll explore the music of Asia. Traveling to Japan, China, and elsewhere, we will listen to instruments, sounds, folk tunes and poetry. The sounds that are the unique musical voices that define a country's identity, tunes that are shared in common, and many melodies and sounds that are borrowed by western composers.
Week of April 8, 2019 - The Symphony Part XIII: Symphonic Music During World War II
Spend a profound week with some haunting, powerful, and peaceful symphonies from the years around World War II. Beginning in 1939 with the first symphony of Darius Milhaud and concluding with Aaron Copland’s third symphony from 1946, which includes the iconic “Fanfare for the Common Man.” Along the way we’ll hear the ninth symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, written in 1945 and the last of his “war trilogy” symphonies, and two pieces with text from the Latin mass — Benjamin Britten’s “Sinfonia da Requiem” and Howard Hanson’s Symphony #4. And we’ll contrast the power of the sixth symphony of Roy Harris, which he dedicated to the memory of the American armed forces, with the pastoral serenity of Vaughan Williams fifth symphony.
Week of April 15, 2019 - Bach’s Not-So-Minor B Minor Mass
“There’s so much that’s mysterious about Bach’s Mass,” Bill says, and this week he attempts to demystify Bach’s grand work by setting its context in history, tracing relevant antecedents: Bach was writing a Latin mass despite his orientation as a Lutheran. Bill surmises that Bach went back to his musical heroes from the Renaissance. “They composed masses in Latin, and so would he.” Bill illustrates pertinent influences in Beethoven, Strauss, and Haydn as well as how Bach reformed some of his own work to inform his mass.
Week of April 22, 2019 - Cello Concertos
“What a sound the cello makes!” Bill opines. The cello started to gain popularity in the 17th and early 18th centuries when it was found to be very good at accompanying singers at the opera, such as Bach cantatas. And it became the vehicle for numerous great and famous compositions in many different settings: by Haydn, Prokofiev, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Villa-Lobos and others. Bill of course includes Elgar’s Cello Concerto in the mix to make the week a triumph for what used to be considered an unwieldy instrument.
Week of April 29, 2019 - TBA
