Music History Courses in London and Online
City Lit offers an extensive programme of online music history and music appreciation courses with a focus on Western classical music, Folk, Jazz, Rock and Pop. There are new topics each year across a growing range of music styles and traditions.
To find out more about music history classes and to read our year-long selection of courses, please see the blog post Music history: your guide to our programme which lists our full programme of classes ordered by term, and by day of the week. You may then click on each title to read the full course outline.
Our staff are all professional musicians who teach, write, broadcast, lecture and perform widely. In recent years they have worked with BBC Radio 3, Gramophone magazine, Birkbeck (University of London), The Open University, Oxford and Cambridge University Press, Early Music, The Orchestra of the age of Enlightenment, The Wigmore Hall and the Aldeburgh Festival.
Many of our students learn for pleasure but some also come to enhance their careers: recent examples include board members of music charities, marketing and administration professionals from orchestras and gap-year students considering university entrance.
Feel free to browse our programme and do email us at music@citylit.ac.uk with any questions.
35 courses available
- The Beatles: a history through their music
The Beatles are the most culturally significant and popular pop band in history. Through analysis of their music and a history of the 1960s we will see how four lads from Liverpool came to define the sound of a decade.
Keeley Street
Tue 27 Oct 2026David HarrisonFull fee £109.00 Senior fee £87.00 Concession £76.00 
Great jazz artists: Weather ReportExplore the groundbreaking music, ideas, and legacy of one of the most influential jazz‑fusion groups of the 20th century.
Keeley Street
Mon 2 Nov 2026Albi GravenerFull fee £99.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £69.00- Disco: a short history
Discover the dazzling music, culture, and legacy of disco, one of the most influential and joyful popular music movements of the twentieth century.
Keeley Street
Mon 2 Nov 2026Toby ManningFull fee £99.00 Senior fee £79.00 Concession £69.00 - Great works: Schütz's Christmas Story
Discover the expressive beauty and musical storytelling of Schütz’s Christmas Story.
Keeley Street
Mon 7 Dec 2026Edward BreenFull fee £39.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £39.00 - Great artists: Paul Robeson
Discover the life and legacy of one of the 20th century’s most remarkable cultural figures.
Keeley Street
Tue 8 Dec 2026Full fee £39.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £39.00 - Great composers: Gerald Finzi
Pacifist, agnostic, vegetarian and cultivator of rare apples: Gerald Finzi (1901-56) is some distance from our idea of the go-getting cosmopolitan composer of the early twentieth century. Yet his many songs and rare chamber and orchestral pieces have endured in the repertoire and are beloved by many. Come and learn more about this quiet, brilliant musician and thinker whose 125th birthday we celebrate this year.
Keeley Street
Tue 8 Dec 2026Katy HamiltonFull fee £39.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £39.00 - Music history bookclub: The Instrumentalist
The music history book club meets towards the end of each term to discuss novels and biographies with musical themes and references relevant to the music history programme. This term’s book is a recent novel depicting on a talented violin pupil of Vivaldi.
Online
Fri 11 Dec 2026Edward BreenFull fee £29.00 Senior fee £29.00 Concession £29.00 - Great works: The Play of Daniel
Discover one of the most captivating musical dramas of the Middle Ages.
Keeley Street
Mon 14 Dec 2026Edward BreenFull fee £39.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £39.00 - The saxophone story
How did a musical joke became arguably one of the most distinctive and expressive of all instruments? We will focus on this strand within the history of jazz but not exclusively.
Keeley Street
Mon 11 Jan 2027Albi GravenerFull fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £104.00 - Handel in Italy
Explore Handel’s transformative Italian years and the remarkable works he composed during this formative period. NB: this course has no scheduled break week.
Keeley Street
Mon 11 Jan 2027Edward BreenFull fee £299.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £209.00 - The music of the Boulangers: Nadia and Lili
One was an award-winning star composer of the early 1900s; the other enjoyed a formidable reputation as a conductor and teacher through to the 1970s. Come and discover the remarkable tale of two sisters whose music and mentorship, in combination, shaped the development of a host of twentieth-century composers and yet are only now receiving their due as composers.
Keeley Street
Tue 12 Jan 2027Katy HamiltonFull fee £149.00 Senior fee £119.00 Concession £104.00 - Classical music today
Explore the vibrant multi-media world of classical music in the 21st century.
Keeley Street
Tue 12 Jan 2027Edward HendersonFull fee £299.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £209.00 - Vienna at the fin de siècle
A hub of artistic innovation, a place of rigid conservativism, and the heart of an empire. We investigate the tremendous range of musical figures working in Vienna at the turn of the century, from Brahms and Schoenberg to Gustav and Alma Mahler, Richard Strauss and Johanna Müller-Hermann. Break week 17 Feb 2027
Online
Wed 13 Jan 2027Katy HamiltonFull fee £299.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £209.00 - Exploring classical music 2
Do you want to know more about classical music history? Explore selected topics and key works in Baroque, Classical and early Romantic music on this highly informative 10-week course. Ideal for people with no specialist knowledge. Break week: 15 Feb or 03 June 2027
Full fee £299.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £209.00 - Exploring Elgar
Journey into the life, music, and legacy of England’s great late‑Romantic master.
Break week: 18 Feb 2027
Keeley Street
Thu 14 Jan 2027Steven RobinsonFull fee £299.00 Senior fee £239.00 Concession £209.00
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