By considering twelfth-century perspectives on love and marriage, as well as the perceived rights, privileges, and expectations of these three remarkable women, students gain a richer comprehension of the values and realities of medieval society. In this centennial year of Symphony Hall, the Radcliffe Seminars and the Boston Symphony Orchestra enter the second year of a unique collaboration. There will be a series of pre-concert lectures at Symphony Hall for Radcliffe Seminars students only, followed by regularly scheduled Tuesday evening concerts. Each lecture features a full description of a major work that is to be played during the concert and is followed by discussion. The lecture gives an in-depth description of the work's defining characteristics of genre and style and examines the kind of audience for which it was written.
Featured works span a wide variety.
They are vocal and instrumental, sacred and secular. The lectures start and end with Mahler and include Bach's B Minor Mass and two Beethoven piano concertos. Students who are Boston Symphony Orchestra subscribers and have tickets to these concerts pay only the tuition. These human experiences have always been best described in literature. In this ten-week seminar students develop an understanding of how the works of Dostoevsky, Borges, Sartre, Pirandello, Melville, and others generate important questions about the existence of God, the nature of reality, and the relation between mind and body.