September 24 – October 8 2025

Over the centuries, composers and painters have often drawn inspiration from the same subject matter – a crow on a dead branch, a lonely traveller, a man contemplating the moon, are common themes, for example, in both the songs of Franz Schubert and the canvases of Caspar David Friedrich.  However, the worlds of music and paintings link very powerfully when one medium directly inspires the other.  This study day series, which spans over 600 years of the arts, analyses and discusses a range of key works in this field, bringing together the music of Martinu with the frescoes of Piero della Francesca, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with the paintings of Viktor Hartmann, Arnold Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead with Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem of the same name, and Schwind’s Symphony with the music of Beethoven.