The Newberry Consort celebrates the scientific and musical innovations of the early Renaissance,

in their concert, corkscrews, coils, and clocks.

Here, historical instruments that were invented during this time,

while seeing drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Gutenberg, and Moore projected overhead,

showing how this period of invention changed the course of music forever.

Friday, March 13th at the University of Chicago, Saturday, March 14th in Evanston, Illinois, and Sunday, March 15th in downtown Chicago. Tickets available at much for being here with us. It's a little hard to make a symphonic concert intimate, but we decided we would try to bring you all close to us and we will talk through Brahms' Second Symphony together.

Brahms spent much of his adult life battling with his ambition to write the next great symphony and his terror

at the shadow of Beethoven standing behind him. Brahms tortured himself for 14 years while writing

his first symphony, and he only published it when he was 49 years old. But when that

symphony finally came out it was a huge success and with immense relief Brahms

quickly wrote another one in just four months. Brahms's first symphony was

quickly dubbed Beethoven's tenth something that annoyed Brahms very much.

When he was told that the main theme of the last movement of his symphony

resembled Beethoven's ode to joy, he famously responded,

Oh, any ass can see that.

But all the same, Brahms had been re-enointed as Beethoven's successor with that first symphony.

And so therefore, his second symphony would also be given a Beethovenian name, pastoral.

But the question since this symphony has been written has been just how pastoral or idyllic is this symphony.

Many people see an unadulterated joy and gentleness in this piece,

but with some melancholy moments, but overall it's as sunny as it seems,

with just the typical battles between sadness and happiness that happen in any symphony.

But there's another school of thought with this symphony,

...