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.
- Music analysis for listeners: Messiah Part I
Course start date: Wed 11 Dec 2024Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Pauline GreeneHandel’s Messiah, composed in1741, is a stalwart work for concert programmers everywhere at Christmas and Easter. We look at Part I, from the beginning to the duet and chorus ‘His yoke is easy’, briefly putting the work in context and examining its forms and overall structure. We will then analyse a passage of recitative, an aria, and a chorus, in order to show how the composer created his effects and how effective this was for audiences then and now.Full fee £49.00 Senior fee £49.00 Concession £49.00 - Great works: Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilègesCourse start date: Wed 2 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Trish ShawThe fantastical opera L'Enfant et les sortileges, by Maurice Ravel, was first performed in March 1925 at the Monte Carlo Opera. Come and explore this delightful work, with plot and libretto by the novelist Collete, and its magical characters and even more magical music.Full fee £39.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £39.00 - Musical interpretation and performance Course start date: Wed 30 Apr 2025
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Cheslav SinghA music appreciation course focusing on the aspects of music left to its performers, particularly in the Western Classical Tradition. **Break week 28th May 2025.Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £191.00 Concession £167.00
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