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The main emphasis on the course concerns local events and significant anniversaries of composers and/ or artists. There are several major anniversaries this year for composers as well as visual artists. The two major anniversaries of Visual artists to be covered during this course are the birth of Michelangelo on the 6th March 1475 and Joseph Mallord William Turner born 23rd April 1775. A significant amount of the course will be taken up by musical responses to their lives and works, including music by Palestrina, a contemporary of Michelangelo who is also celebrating an anniversary.

Other significant artists celebrating anniversaries are the French Realist painters Jean Francois Millet and Jean Baptiste Corot. We will be considering their works in juxtaposition with contemporary composer Georges Bizet who also died in 1875. Two more highly influential French composers were born 50 years apart during our period of study. Maurice Ravel, post-Impressionist was born in March 1875 and Pierre Boulez, enfant terrible of the Post-war avant Garde was born in 1925, exactly 50 years and 0ne day after Ravel... The course content may well alter slightly, dependent on any exhibitions events, or obituaries being announced in the meantime, as yet unknown.