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The Royal Citole or Gittern was probably originally made for King Edward I or King Edward II around 1300 and is elaborately carved with the sort of scenes of everyday life found in Books of Hours.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

Shakespeare and Music

Shakespeare and Music I ran this course jointly with Rudy Sabor.  Taking a different play each week with students giving an outline of the plot, examining the contemporary music and music inspired by it by later composers for tone poems, operas, songs and other works.  I covered Anthony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King… Read more »

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 »

Mily Balakirev

The Mighty Handful The lives and music of Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov examining how they came together and how their careers overlapped. In 1867 the critic Stasov wrote a review of the Pan-Slav concert organised by Mily Balakirev: “God grant that our Slavonic guests may never forget today’s concert; God grant that they… Read more »

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