Music. Learn, enjoy, appreciate.

In the first part of this new series on music in Europe in the late Nineteenth Century, we weave together the various nationalist strands of orchestral and operatic music composed in this period, which is referred to as the Fin de Siècle. 

We note how the rising young Czech composer Dvorak is influenced by the music of his German mentor Brahms, and how Tchaikovsky also chooses to embrace the familiar forms of contemporary European music. By contrast, the radical Russian group of composers – the so-called ‘Mighty Five’, which includes Borodin and Mussorgsky – vary wildly, even amongst themselves, about how and what a composer should compose. 

During these years, the French school – led by Saint-Saëns, Delibes and Massenet – recovers quickly from the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War; while the Italian school experiences something of a hiatus following Verdi’s two seemingly valedictory works, Aida and the Requiem. 

After the artistically triumphant, but financially disastrous first production of his epic Ring cycle at Bayreuth, Wagner (having failed to attract the support of the new German Emperor) is forced again to rely on the financial assistance of his long-suffering patron King Ludwig. Meanwhile, he begins work on his final masterpiece, Parsifal, completing it only months before his death in February 1883. 

Aims

The aims of this course are to:

• assemble a comprehensive survey of the five major strands of European cl