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This lecture examines the work of Hugo de Vries, a Dutch botanist who was one of the first to claim that science would allow plants and animals to be designed to order.
This lecture examines the fascination surrounding works that are left unfinished at their composers’ deaths. It also looks at the urge that certain of us have to complete these uncompleted works, however unwisely and however unbidden.
Europe’s Wars of Religion were fought against entire populations, and were punctuated by events remembered as atrocities: such as the siege of Leiden in 1573-4 or, most notoriously, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacres in France in 1572.
The lecture will show how Prohibition animated combatants on both sides, generating two Americas that were barely comprehensible to each other, and how the truce declared during depression and war would not last.
We will trace the musical, visual and choreographical consequences of this new trend through several later Diaghilev ballets: Parade (Satie/Picasso), Chout (Prokofiev/Larionov), Le Pas d’Acier (Prokofiev/Yakulov).
On the 200th anniversary of George IV's accession to the throne, this lecture considers whether or not he had any real impact on the fast-industrialising world around him, and the turbulent political times he lived through.