We’re back with our tenth episode. Musicologist Jill Rogers (University College Cork) joins host Matthew Friedman for a holiday special exploring how modernist and avant-garde composers have marked Christmas in their music since the early 20th century. Whether mobilizing patriotic sentiment in 1914, or trying to find a space for the sacred in the rubble of war, and the shadow of the Holocaust, modernist and avant-garde composers of the 20th century reflected the often dark, always complicated spirit of their times, while marking a season of contemplation and the promise of redemption.
This episode features music by Claude Debussy, Nadia Boulanger, Benjamin Britten, Krzysztof Penderecki, Francis Poulenc, and Peter Maxwell Davies.