The Marshall University School of Music’s MUsic Mondays series will continue with the third lecture of the fall series at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 27, 905 3rd Ave., Huntington. This offering from the fall series, titled “Prelude to What?” explores the prelude as a piece of music and the various stylistic ideas it has taken on throughout the course of 400 years.
The lecture looks at selected works by composers from across 400 years, starting with Monteverdi in the 1500s and ending with Debussy in the early 1900s. Presenter Dr. Johan Botes, assistant professor of piano at Marshall University, said that the prelude has had quite an interesting history as a musical work and deserves some research.
“The prelude is a piece of music which has fascinated me for a long time,” Botes said. “As students we tend to learn lots of small preludes by baroque and classical composers and we never really stop to think about what the term actually means. As a university student when I learned preludes of French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy, I realized that there was definitely more to the term ‘prelude’ than meets the eye.”
The fall series will continue Dec. 11 with the lecture topic of “Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Quintessential Englishness,” presented by Dr. Vicki Stroeher, professor of music history.
Seating is limited. Participants are invited to arrive early to enjoy conversation and refreshments. Organizers ask for a $10 donation, payable at the door, with all proceeds going to support the music program. Checks should be made payable to Marshall University. MU students receive free admission with a Marshall ID.
For more information about MUsic Mondays, call the School of Music at 304-696-3117.
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Photo: Dr. Johan Botes will give the next MUsic Mondays lecture Nov. 27.