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What kind of people owned a guitar in the London of Elizabeth I and where did they go shopping for one? It is possible to assemble a remarkably full picture of the instrument’s place in the social life and trade and trade of Tudor England.
This opening lecture of the series, with musical illustrations, will use documents, poetry and images to bring the instrument to life, with a particular focus on the autobiography of the beguiling Tudor musician Thomas Whythorne.
A musical journey into The Orgelbüchlein - the jewel in Bach's organ music - a collection of magnificent miniatures which encompass all the musical emotions and which allow the organist to show all the colours and sonorities of the instrument at his disposal.
In the year 754 the first pope ever to cross the Alps came to a small chapel in what is now northern France and prostrated himself before the king of the Franks, beseeching him for military aid.
A singer in a church of 450-650 was appointed in the same way as a gravedigger - too lowly to demand the bishop's attention. Arrangements were increasingly made to school singers in the great metropolitan churches of the West, as will be demonstrated.
In their deliberations, the bishops identified for the first time in Christian history, an actual ministry of song. This lecture will build on this foundational moment in Christian musical history.
Like many others in the first and second centuries, the governor thought the Christians very strange. So they were in many respects, but they were not so strange that they repudiated the use of ritual song. We begin our survey with the music of the first Christian communities.