Music history - Keeley Street

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.

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  1. Great works: Stabat mater from plainchant to Pärt
    Last Few Places
    Course start date:  Thu 18 Apr 2024

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    Tutors:  Trish Shaw
    This course examines a core Latin Christian hymn text, Stabat mater dolorosa, which has received dozens of musical settings over eight centuries, from the 13th century to the present day. Why does this particular text hold such fascination for composers, and how has its meaning been interpreted through music?
    Full fee £39.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £39.00
  2. Great works: Rhapsody in Blue
    Course start date:  Thu 18 Jul 2024

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    Tutors:  Pauline Greene
    100 years ago a 26-year-old New York songwriter realised that his name appeared on a concert poster advertising An Experiment in Modern Music, featuring a piece composed by him. He had five weeks to complete it, and the result was Rhapsody in Blue.
    Full fee £29.00 Senior fee £29.00 Concession £29.00
  3. Great artists: Leonard Bernstein
    Course start date:  Thu 18 Jul 2024

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    Tutors:  Pauline Greene
    Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was a brilliant conductor, composer, and educator, and a sometimes controversial public figure. We explore his music in the context of the arts in America, looking especially at his effortless assimilation of popular and classical styles.
    Full fee £29.00 Senior fee £29.00 Concession £29.00
  4. Opera appreciation: an introduction
    Course start date:  Thu 25 Jul 2024

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    Tutors:  Pauline Greene
    What is opera? And how do you approach watching and listening to it? Explore the ostentatious, sometimes overwhelming, world of opera through study of two major works and styles.
    Full fee £69.00 Senior fee £69.00 Concession £69.00
  5. Great composers: Arnold Schoenberg
    Course start date:  Thu 12 Dec 2024

    Location on this date:  Keeley Street

    Tutors:  Trish Shaw
    Arnold Schoenberg was born in 1874, and his career spanned the period from high Romanticism through Modernism to the post-1945 avante garde. Come and learn how this fascinating and eclectic composer was part of, and a huge influence on, Western classical music during his lifetime and beyond, and learn to appreciate his music for its own sake.
    Full fee £59.00 Senior fee £59.00 Concession £59.00
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