Epoch-Making Premieres
Instructor: Dr. Stephen Lewis
Class length: 85 minutes
Class dates: Sundays at 5 PM
Location: IN-PERSON and ONLINE, Dr. Lewis’s studio (14418 SE Ellis St, Portland, OR, 97236)
Maximum class size: 16 students
Tuition: $375 per student
To sign up: fill out form below, or email Stephen at chopinois@gmail.com
Throughout Western music history, some musical works have had outsized impacts on everything that would follow. In this course, Stephen will take participants on a tour through six such premieres, from the early Renaissance through the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern eras of classical music. Throughout the course, we will explore how Western composers have consistently been concerned with meaning: both what their music means and how their music means.
In this course, we will learn about:
Week 1: Music and Meaning: Guillaume DuFay, “Nuper rosarum flores”
Week 2: The Beginnings of Opera: Claudio Monteverdi, L’Orfeo
Week 3: Instrumental Music Ascendant: Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony #3, (Eroica)
Week 4: A Gentle Revolution: Claude Debussy, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Week 5: A Violent Apotheosis: Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring
Week 6: Strange New Worlds: Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire