Our first idea when it came to this presentation was to focus on the intertextuality between John Donne's
Holy Sonnets and music.
Sonnet 14 is referenced in John Adams' opera
Dr. Atomic. The opera focuses on Dr. Oppenheimer's psychological struggles with creating something as technologically magnificent, and yet as destructive as the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer's aria at the end of the first act illustrates his struggle. This is a video of that aria, as performed in Amsterdam in 2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYiokai3FW4While researching other musical connections to the
Holy Sonnets, I came across a collection of pieces for piano and tenor voice by English opera composer Benjamin Britten. Further research on these selections led to an explanation on Britten's motivation for putting these sonnets to music. Brian Gooch, a professor at the University of Victoria, claims that the pieces were inspired by a trip to Germany, including concentration camps, in 1945. Using the Naxos Music Library, I found a recording of these powerful pieces. This is a link to that recording:
http://cornellcollege.naxosmusiclibrary.com/catalogue/item.asp?cid=8.557201If you are interested, please read Gooch's entire article on Britten's pieces here:
http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/
si-07/gooch.htm
One of Octave's fundamental goals is to provide musical education to the public. Every Saturday morning, we go to Taylor Elementary School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to give lessons to interested students. Taylor Elementary was flooded out two summers ago and is still recovering. Through a music mentoring program in association with a non-profit organization called Matthew 25, Octave has been providing music lessons for students that would otherwise not be able to study music. We work with Dr. Knight, who got us started this year with workshops on harmonica and ukulele. We have students teaching violin, cello, guitar, drums, trumpet, clarinet, and saxophone.
