William Sterling

An introduction to the music section

The Royal Citole or Gittern was probably originally made for King Edward I or King Edward II around 1300 and is elaborately carved with the sort of scenes of everyday life found in Books of Hours. There is a Centaur hunting, a peasant chopping wood, another thrashing acorns from the trees for his pigs and the original rabbit with the caught in headlights look as an arrow hurtles towards it. The end is carved as a magnificent dragon. There is also the coat of arms on it of Queen Elizabeth I and her favourite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, suggesting that its conversion to a violin was done for Elizabeth to use as a gift when she visited the earl at his castle in Warwickshire. Image © Trustees of the British Museum
My earliest memory of music making was conducting the school band mostly consisting of percussion instruments with our teacher, Mrs Distin, filling in the melody and harmony on the piano. I had to announce to the audience of parents and friends that we were about to play "Minuet in G by John Sebastian Bach". My proud mother took a photo of me conducting which I believe my sister has in the family album. I was five years old. Read more »

SPOTLIGHT: Music

Sergei Rachmaninov

Rachmaninov, the Last Romantic The career and music of the great composer and pianist. In the tradition of the great composer pianists of the nineteenth century such as Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt, Rachmaninov had the advantage of living in the age of records so we can hear what he was like as a pianist. Plagued… Read more »

Beethoven’s String Quartets

Beethoven’s String Quartets A detailed examination of all the quartets, often with scores, placing them in context with comparisons to other works being written at the same time. Possibly the greatest composer of string quartets, the pinnacle of chamber music, Beethoven wrote 16 masterpieces in this genre over his whole career. Each week we analysed… Read more »

Gustav Holst

Vaughan Williams and Holst Two great friends who pioneered a new English style with varying success. Not just the composers of Greensleeves and the Planets, Vaughan Williams and Holst followed Elgar’s lead as two of the standard bearers of the English Musical Renaissance. Both were from Gloucestershire but they met as students at the Royal… Read more »

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