| Status: | Active, open to new members |
| Convenor: | |
| Group email: | Music Appreciation group |
| When: | Monthly on Thursday afternoons 4th Thursday of each Month at 14.00 |
| Venue: | At Convenors |
Our objective is to widen our members’ experience and enjoyment of all musical genres.
The Group focuses on a wide range variety of musical categories, including classical, opera, jazz, film, and many others at monthly meetings.
We welcome introductions by members and use any appropriate audiovisual presentation. Presentations lead to group discussion and recommendations for future meetings.
Our Group meets in a private home where we can play, listen and discuss music in comfort, disturbed only by the sound of our members enjoying refreshments!
If you are interested in joining the Music Appreciation group please contact the group convenor, using the email link above.
Recent meetings in 2025
included a variety of presentations and music, including:
The life and work of composers such as Mozart and Schubert
The work of Gilbert and Sullivan with mentions of his life, a murder at his house in Bushey, Herts with members singing as best they could some of the more memorable songs.
How the etiquette of 16th to 18th century audiences differed from today’s audiences focussing on classical concerts in venues such as The Royal Albert Hall.
Demonstrations of equipment used to play music over the past 100 years, from cylinders, through discs and back to Vinyl.
We welcome members playing their own instruments even demonstrating a ‘home -made’ didgeridoo.
You are encouraged to bring their music choices for others to hear. Submissions can be on compact disc, usb, links to YouTube or Spotify. Even 78’s and cassettes if you bring your own player!!
Programme for Future meetings in 2026
We always include a popular session featuring the choice of our members. This leads to ‘unexpected choices and great introductions to ‘new composers and performers’ we may otherwise have missed.
We’ve even converted members to a ‘love of opera’ and jazz through brilliantly researched contributions from members.
Plus, more controversially, we ended 2025 with a session entitled, ‘Who altered our favourite Christmas Carols and Why’?
We continue to focus on suggestions and contributions of our members. If you want to join us, please contact: peterj42@gmail.com
Focus on Composers
Schubert 1797 -1828
In August 2025, our meeting focused on several works by Schubert, an extraordinary composer who, in a tragically short lifetime (he died aged 31) composed nine symphonies, a huge canon of chamber music and over 600 songs.
From the first song we heard – ‘Erlkönig’ (Goblin king) which tells the story of a child being snatched from his father by a supernatural being, the atmosphere became electric. We heard the frantic pace of father and son trying to get away from the Erlkonig, the terrified screams of the little boy, who could see and feel his assailant while his father could not. Then Erlkönig’s honeyed tones when offering the child a life in his goblin realm, which in the end turned into a threatening snarl.
All performed by a single singer and a piano. Truly terrifying, and yes, the Erlkönig got his victim in the end. We heard half a dozen further songs covering, inter alia, the joys of walking, lost love, a prayer to the virgin, the bleak world of a starving hurdy-gurdy man and the joyous correspondence of two young lovers communicating by pigeon post.
The centrepiece of the afternoon was a movement from one of Schubert’s most important works, the String Quintet in C Major, one of an astonishing number of truly great pieces that poured out of him in the final months of his life when he was very ill and must have known that the end was close.
This movement starts quietly, with a sublimely beautiful tune (a vision of the afterlife or perhaps reflecting on the beauty of past life, so soon to end?) which was punctuated throughout by a slow pizzicato ‘dum dum’ motif played by the cello (Fate knocking at the door?). This tune slowly subsides and after a noticeably short pause, the music erupts into pain and anger, loudly played. “Why Me?” it screams, but the pain continues, until it too eventually subsides. And then, after another very brief pause, the original sublime tune returns, this time intertwined with themes from the pain and anger section. Somehow, the music now seems even more beautiful than before, but also desperately, desperately sad. It was impossible not to be deeply moved by this amazing music – the entire group seemed to feel so. So, for the future, there are plans to counterbalance with comic songs from the 20th Century – Tom Lehrer, Flanders and Swan, Victor Borge etc, etc