Summer Term 2024

Class in progress Class in progress

Music Appreciation - Before Baroque (Code MA5)

This course has now completed.

Tuesdays 10.00am to 12.00pm

5 meetings each of 2 hours from Tuesday 9 April 2024

Tutor: John Winter

Cost: £40 - a face-to-face course

Location: Function room, Plough & Harrow

Music did not, definitely not, start at 1550. Medieval and Renaissance art, architecture and literature is widely appreciated and we have come to realise that the music of this time also deserves consideration. This short course will look at some of the great composers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the beautiful choral works of composers including Machaut, Dufay, Dunstable, Obrecht and Josquin as well as that eminent composer, Anon. We shall also hear music on instruments such as shawms, cornetts, sackbuts, rauschpfeifes, gitterns and racketts and enjoy some of the rousing dances of that time.
The word Medieval is often used in a derogatory way, this course should show that this is unfair.

Please note: There will be no half-term break.


Literature - Hertfordshire authors 3(Code LH3)

This course is now full.

Thursdays 2.00pm - 4.00pm

10 meetings each of 2 hours from Thursday 18 April 2024

Tutor: Michael King

Cost: £80 - a face-to-face course.

Location: Charles Hill Room, Harpenden Trust @ 130 Southdown Road

Many notable authors were born, lived in or spent time in Hertfordshire.
We will consider a wide range of authors, in a variety of literary genres, who had a connection with the county (although not necessarily writing about Hertfordshire).
These will include:

  • Novels
    • Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
    • E. M Forster: Howard's End
    • Elizabeth Bowen: The Little Girls
    • George Orwell: Coming up for Air
    • Graham Green: * title to be decided *
    • Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim
  • Short stories
    • W.W. Jacobs
    • W.E. Johns: Biggles (!)
  • Drama
    • George Bernard Shaw: * play to be decided *
  • Non-Fiction
    • Francis Bacon: Essays ( a selection)
    • Samuel Pepys
    • Daniel Defoe
    • William Cobbett
    • Charles Lamb
    • Apsley Cherry-Garrard: The Worst Journey in the World (extracts)
  • Poetry
    • George Chapman, Thomas Campion, William Cowper, Lord Byron, Stevie Smith, John Betjeman, Louis Macneice, David Holbrook.

Please note: There may be a half-term break. If so, this will be on Thursday 30 May 2024.