OLLI0088 - Music, Pandemics, and History

Course Description

Diseases are, at least in part, culturally constructed. When Mimi (of Puccini’s La Boheme) coughs out her last breaths on stage, when composer Guillaume Dufay calls to St. Sebatian to “protect and preserve me,” when J.S. Bach’s tenor recites “The whole world is nothing but a hospital,” we understand these texts on the basis of our very human reaction to disease. In this course, we will examine human cultural responses to pandemics, juxtaposing our own experiences with COVID-19 with music from the historical past. Music could be an answer to fear or its victim; it could celebrate the possibility of survival and redemption or mourn the passing of fellow citizens; it could be chastened by the experience or use humor in its defiance. This course will be recorded.