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The Royal Citole or Gittern was probably originally made for King Edward I or King Edward II around 1300 and is elaborately carved with the sort of scenes of everyday life found in Books of Hours.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

Hector Berlioz

Berlioz, his Life in Music An examination of his life and music using his own remarkable autobiography as a guide. Unlike many of his contemporaries such as Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt, Berlioz was not an infant prodigy. In fact he never mastered any instrument and always composed in silence away from the piano, an instrument… Read more »

Michael Tippett

Britten, Walton and Tippett Three of the greatest British composers of the twentieth century had very different attitudes to music but all attempted to write in many different media such as opera, choral, orchestral and chamber music. Among the operas studied were Midsummer Marriage, King Priam, Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Albert Herring,… Read more »

Music for the Mass

Music for the Mass – A Thousand Years of Choral Music From its early origins in the Middle Ages, the Mass has inspired some of the greatest music by the greatest composers. This course examined the chronological development of the Mass and the Requiem by composers from the Middle Ages to the Present Day from… Read more »

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