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Italo-Byzantine art will be considered as background to the early or ‘proto’ Renaissance at a time when Italy was a focus of stylistic cross-currents from South, East and Northern Europe.
Canons of taste and value in other media, such as literature, art and music, have been challenged in recent decades by proponents of sexual and ethnic equality.
Scriabin was Rachmaninov’s classmate at the Moscow Conservatoire, and enjoyed comparable fame during his lifetime, and yet today he is much less known, especially outside Russia.
For nearly seventy years, what might be called ‘the canon’ of greatest films has been arbitrated by an international poll of critics delivering a ‘ten best’ list every decade, published in the BFI’s Sight & Sound.
This lecture will look at change ringing, which is ringing a series of tuned bells (as you might find in the bell tower of a church) in a particular sequence, and this has exciting mathematical properties. We will also ask: why are bells bell-shaped?
Boris Ord composed one tiny Christmas carol – ‘Adam lay ybounden’. But Ord’s largest contribution to the carol genre was his work as choirmaster at King’s College, Cambridge from 1929 to 1957.
Rachmaninov is considered by many to be the greatest composer-pianist in history. But his very popularity has left the complexity and subtlety of his music underappreciated.