Intensify your journey into the world of chamber music with this in-depth exploration of the music of three groundbreaking composers. Presented by the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) with Musica Viva, Australia’s oldest independent professional performing arts organization, Chamber Music Essentials is based on a novel format: active performance listening-and-response workshops, live concerts and up-close gatherings with performing musicians which offer new perspectives in the experience of the art form. No prerequisite music knowledge is required to experience how chamber music can enchant, amuse, elevate, excite and calm the human spirit.

Course Content

1. How to listen to chamber music in an active and enquiring way
2. Music appreciation – understanding and analysing a composer’s influences and choices
3. The evolution of chamber music across the Classical and early Romantic period, through the examination of piano trios and strings quartets by Haydn, Beethoven and Schumann
4. Attendance at two Musica Viva 2010 season concerts with tickets provided by Musica Viva: Alina Ibragimova (violin) & Cédric Tiberghien (piano) performing works by Beethoven, Schumann, Janácek & Stanhope and the Atos Trio performing piano trios by Mendelssohn, Rakmaninov, Schumann and Stanhope.

Course Delivery

Six out of the eight meetings are workshop seminars which include: live and recorded music demonstrations and active listening by the participants; lectures; discussions centring on the participants’ responses to the music; video footage of historical chamber music performances.

The remaining two meetings take place at Musica Viva concerts and consist of two parts. The first part will be a 30 minute pre-concert talk in which the presenter will share information about the music being performed and use recorded musical examples to illustrate various points. The primary focus of these talks is to give a historical context for the music with reference to the life and times of the composer. The second part will be the concert itself, where participants will hear and see leading international chamber musicians perform.

These concert-evening meetings will be held at City Recital Hall Angel Place, commencing at 6.15 pm with the pre-concert talk, and followed by the performance at 7pm. Finishing times may vary, but will not be later than 9.30pm.

Course Outcomes

At the end of this course, participants will:

1. Have an understanding of the relationships – musical and personal – between Haydn, Beethoven and Schumann, and their relative influences on each other
2. Have heard two young stars of the musical world in ascension perform a duo recital of virtuoso works from the violin sonata repertoire
3. Have an understanding of Haydn’s role in the development and evolution of the piano trio
4. Have an understanding of Haydn’s role as ‘father of the string quartet’
5. Have an understanding of Beethoven’s exploration of the piano trio medium
6. Have an understanding of Beethoven’s consolidation of the string quartet form he inherited from Haydn, and Beethoven’s subsequent extension of the medium
7. Have heard a multiple award-winning piano trio perform repertoire from across the Romantic age (and a little further!)
8. Have an understanding of the direction of chamber music beyond the Classical period, though examining the works of Schumann