Beaumont School Music Department

I just found a short documentary on BBC Radio 4 Extra from 1999. It concerns Grout's 'A History a Western Music', a book every music student will know VERY well. Worth a listen for students past, present and future! Student Bibles: The History of Western Music

Interesting read - inner pulse guys, inner pulse! The Beat Goes On: A Short History of the Metronome From the WQXR Blog

"A church or school without a choir is like a body without a soul." John Rutter delivers a very important statement about music in our lives.  I truly feel passionate about every word he says. Please watch, it is so important.

This 1950 cartoon by Looney Tunes is Bugs Bunny at his operatic finest.  Bugs escapes the obsessed Elmer Fudd and they find themselves in a production of  Il Barbiere di Siviglia  at (presumably) the Hollywood Bowl. Obligatory antics ensue, and we go all in on a creatively animated scalp massage. Rabbit Of Seville from Wet The Face on Vimeo .

I've got loads of better things to do, but I got really excited about this piece of music today and I was compelled to blog about it. Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960) wrote this piece,  The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, in 1994. In the words of the composer: "Eight centuries ago Isaac The Blind, the great kabbalist rabbi of Provence, dictated a manuscript in which he asserted that all things and events in the universe are product of combinations of the Hebrew alphabet's letters: 'Their root is in a name, for the letters are like branches, which appear in the manner of flickering flames, mobile, and nevertheless linked to the coal'. His conviction still resonates today: don't we have scientists who believe that the clue to our life and fate is hidden in other codes?" Notes from the composer continue  here . The piece is scored for string quartet and 'klezmer clarinet', and uses traditional Jewish melodies, including tho...