NHK Royal Academy of Music Lectures

Lecture 1 is about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and the 17th century in which music served functional purpose, whether serving the state through courts or serving God through the church. How this affected Bach's career and how the music he wrote engaged with those questions of the individual belonging to a community that served a greater purpose?

In the 2nd lecture, we will look at the way in which Wolfgang Mozart gives up his job working for a single employer and goes freelance. He had to juggle all sorts of different types of musical jobs; composing, performing, teaching, publishing and above all, he had to maintain his popularity in order to just earn a living. How these social circumstances shaped his music?

In the 3rd lecture, we will see how Beethoven capitalizes on a very different feeling in the decades in Vienna following Mozart's death. There was a new spirit of heroism and an interest in the growth of the individual as an autonomous subject. Beethoven encodes these things in his music and in turn he comes to be seen as the archetypal artistic genius.

Lecture 4 is about Chopin and his Mazurkas, which are political and give us a window into a psychological process that Chopin was using. We will discuss nationalism and Polish culture, discuss improvisation, and what it's like to be a romantic composer and pianist and how that affected his harmony, then what legacies there are for us as contemporary musicians.

In the 5th lecture, we will be seeing what the use of music is in today's society, how today's young composers are constructing their own identities, and how they are using new media, developing new audiences and writing in new styles in order to be heard and to make an individual contribution to our musical culture. Their pieces will also be introduced in the lecture.