Oh dear, I should have posted about my trip to London on Friday 28th to attend this event: a combined lecture-cum-recital hosted by Dr Emma McEvoy at the Wallace Collection, discussing, and illustrating, 'The Music of Gothic'. Dr McEvoy's case is that Gothic literature is full of music, and stage adaptations of Gothic works are too - but at first such orchestration was quite lighthearted, drawing on the conventions of comic opera. It was only from about 1820 that melodrama took over and 'The Music of Gothic' started to turn into 'Gothic Music'. A chamber ensemble conducted by the organist of St Cuthbert's Philbeach Gardens played a variety of pieces by now-forgotten composers to make her point. Funnily enough I have been reading a book about Henry Purcell at the moment - I say 'reading', but there are quite a few bits which I have no greater chance of understanding than I would a programming manual, so I skipped over them - and that mentions a number of pieces from his theatre work that would seem to go against Dr McEvoy's case, but she is, of course, planning a book, which will doubtless deal with all of that. I can't promise I'll be prepared to take out the loan necessary to buy it!
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