During these times of Covid 19, we encourage everyone to take advantage of the live streams, recordings, lectures, and other offerings by our outstanding local musicians.
If you love music, consider attending Compline, a sung service of chant and polyphony in candlelight, and Evensong, a contemplative service with psalms, canticles, hymns, and anthems. Live Streamed HERE on our Facebook Group; all are then posted on our Streamed Services page.
Please check the featured group's website for ticket availability, updated times, and program information, as details can change.
How to Listen to 20th and 21st Century Music
John Prescott, PhD, Musicologist and Lecturer
6-week course June 10 through July 15, Thursdays from 12:30pm -2:30pm, via Zoom
This summer I will be giving a 6-week course: "How to Listen to 20th and 21st Century Music.”
For many classical music lovers, much of the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries can be very daunting. In this class we will explore some of the main trends in music of the past 120 years. We will learn about the techniques and outlooks of the composers. We will listen to music for traditional and electronic instruments, as well as music which uses acoustic instruments in non-traditional ways. In our final session, internationally known composer Ann Callaway will be with us to perform and discuss her music and answer questions about how a twenty-first century composer works.
The course is being offered through the Osher LifeLong Learning Institute at San Francisco State, which offers college courses for anyone over the age of 50. You must be a member of the Osher Institute to register. To learn about joining the Osher Institute please click here:
https://olli.sfsu.edu/#main-content
To register for my course please click here:
https://www.campusce.net/sfsu/course/course.aspx?C=745&pc=100&mc=&sc=
Week 1. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: The breaking open of 19th century musical conventions. This work literally caused riots when it premiered in 1913. Stravinsky explored completely new ways of using rhythm, melody, and orchestral sound.
Week 2. The Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. These pioneers created a musical system in which every note of the scale was equally related to every other, thus breaking down the hierarchies of older musical systems and leaving some listeners wandering in the wilderness.
Week 3. Early ventures in electronic music: Messiaen and Varez. Long before modern computers, these composers were reveling in the new sounds made possible by means of electronic technology.
Week 4. The edges of music: the experiments of John Cage.
Week 5. The minimalism of John Adams and Philip Glass: The new simplicity. In the later twentieth century these composers reacted to the extreme complexity of the music which preceded them. They created scores of hypnotic beauty from a bare minimum of shifting harmonic patterns.
Week 6. The composer in her own words: Music of and conversation with Ann Callaway.
For many classical music lovers, much of the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries can be very daunting. In this class we will explore some of the main trends in music of the past 120 years. We will learn about the techniques and outlooks of the composers. We will listen to music for traditional and electronic instruments, as well as music which uses acoustic instruments in non-traditional ways. In our final session, internationally known composer Ann Callaway will be with us to perform and discuss her music and answer questions about how a twenty-first century composer works.
The course is being offered through the Osher LifeLong Learning Institute at San Francisco State, which offers college courses for anyone over the age of 50. You must be a member of the Osher Institute to register. To learn about joining the Osher Institute please click here:
https://olli.sfsu.edu/#main-content
To register for my course please click here:
https://www.campusce.net/sfsu/course/course.aspx?C=745&pc=100&mc=&sc=
Week 1. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: The breaking open of 19th century musical conventions. This work literally caused riots when it premiered in 1913. Stravinsky explored completely new ways of using rhythm, melody, and orchestral sound.
Week 2. The Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. These pioneers created a musical system in which every note of the scale was equally related to every other, thus breaking down the hierarchies of older musical systems and leaving some listeners wandering in the wilderness.
Week 3. Early ventures in electronic music: Messiaen and Varez. Long before modern computers, these composers were reveling in the new sounds made possible by means of electronic technology.
Week 4. The edges of music: the experiments of John Cage.
Week 5. The minimalism of John Adams and Philip Glass: The new simplicity. In the later twentieth century these composers reacted to the extreme complexity of the music which preceded them. They created scores of hypnotic beauty from a bare minimum of shifting harmonic patterns.
Week 6. The composer in her own words: Music of and conversation with Ann Callaway.
An American Picnic
Sunday, June 13, 5pm PDT, streamed
San Francisco Choral Artists
Magen Solomon, Artistic Director
sfca.org
The weather’s lovely, everything’s blooming, and the pandemic is lifting — let’s have a picnic with friends! Our range of musical delicacies include recently recorded shapenote hymns, folksongs, Broadway tunes, and spirituals, together with some of the delicious American works from past concerts, including both old favorites and new works written specifically for us. So grab a snack (or support a local sandwich shop!) and join us for some of the best of American choral music. Works by Copland, Alice Parker, William Grant Still and others.
More info at concert.sfca.org/
More info at concert.sfca.org/
Lecture Series
Eric Hansen, Music Director
Prometheus Symphony Orchestra
prometheussymphony.org
Our Music Director, Eric Hansen, is offering a lively series of lectures about music, music theory and history. And you’re all invited to join us! Be amazed and entertained, learn new things, ask questions. There will be bad jokes. Online, from the comfort of your armchair, Sunday afternoons, bring your own wine. Lectures will be recorded so you can listen whenever you’re free.
Eric will delve into the main composers, the important developments of the orchestra genre/musical form, the changing makeup of the orchestra (types of instruments, size of the orchestra and who were the musicians), the cities/countries that produced flourishing orchestras and regional styles, who supported orchestras and the effect that had (religious vs secular), who was in the audience, and what were musicians’ lives like?
We hope you enjoy these terrific music talks by Eric, just as you do at our concerts. And of course we hope you are inspired to make a donation as a token of your appreciation, to help Prometheus make it through these times when we cannot play for you.
Watch the lectures series here https://www.prometheussymphony.org/lectures
Support Prometheus Symphony Orchestra with a donation HERE. Sign up for their mailing list HERE
Eric will delve into the main composers, the important developments of the orchestra genre/musical form, the changing makeup of the orchestra (types of instruments, size of the orchestra and who were the musicians), the cities/countries that produced flourishing orchestras and regional styles, who supported orchestras and the effect that had (religious vs secular), who was in the audience, and what were musicians’ lives like?
We hope you enjoy these terrific music talks by Eric, just as you do at our concerts. And of course we hope you are inspired to make a donation as a token of your appreciation, to help Prometheus make it through these times when we cannot play for you.
Watch the lectures series here https://www.prometheussymphony.org/lectures
Support Prometheus Symphony Orchestra with a donation HERE. Sign up for their mailing list HERE