The Roaring Twenties: A New Music for a New Age
The 1920s tore up the rulebook. Gone were the shadowed, pre-war streets of Vienna and the seismic shock of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. In their place came something lighter, sharper, and altogether more fun, an exuberant spirit that swept far beyond the Charleston-crazed dance halls of America to sweep across Europe entire, from Walton and Bliss in England to Nielsen in Denmark, Sibelius in Finland, and Janáček in Czechoslovakia.
This was the age of neo: Neo-Classicism and Neo-Romanticism, composers looking back even as they raced forward, Stravinsky chief among them. In Vienna, Berg pushed music in a starker, more radical direction with Wozzeck, while Paris found its own answer in Les Six, among them Poulenc, Milhaud and Honegger, mischievous, irreverent, in love with jazz and cabaret as much as the concert hall. Meanwhile Gershwin and Copland gave the decade its American voice, and Bartók and Kodály its Hungarian one. But the party couldn’t last forever. When the Wall Street Crash brought the decade crashing down, music grew serious again, its playful energy sobered by hard times ahead.
All lectures take place at Blackheath Halls on a Monday, 10am, unless otherwise stated
Sep 21 & 28 Morden College, SE3 0PW
Oct 5, 12 & 19
Nov 2, 9, 16, 23 & 30
Dec 7
The Roaring Twenties Weekly Programme
Course Fee: £170 (£17 per lecture)
Further details and to book:
Richard Perks 07957749438 or email rfperks@gmail.com