ALL1518-Z 12 Weeks Wednesdays 3:00-4:20 Start Date 16-Sep
Zoom Limit 25
People often divide classical music into two broad categories: absolute music, which is all about itself and therefore often seen as the purest music, and program music, composed in relation to some kind of extramusical content and therefore seen as less pure. In fact, there’s no dividing line: it’s a wide spectrum, and great works have been written all across it. This course will explore the issue through music tied to literature. We got a glimpse of it this past spring in the ALL course on religious music, but this time we’ll embrace a wider range of sources—prose to poetry, ancient to modern, tragic to comic. Ideally, music and literature together achieve things neither can do on its own. We’ll hear some great combinations … explore some great partnerships … and consider the special category of music for movies.
Coordinator: John Temple 
John is a retired business writer, lifelong listener, long-ago music critic and 20-year Barnstable Village resident. This will be his 17th ALL course and, like the others, it will focus on a relatively narrow topic within the world of classical music. Prior examples have ranged from specific genres (chamber music, choral works, Mozart piano concertos) to topics that cross categories (nationalism in music, music of liberation, music of the 1930s, etc.).