My updates during time working on Part Five have been non-existent, as I have been furiously plowing through the course material in order to complete it in time for when I start my next modules. This is not to say I have been exclusively working on the course materials; on the contrary I have been doing a lot of listening, and discovering more and more works that are new to me. I have also embarked on a short five week course dealing with Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, courtesy of Coursera and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I have immensely enjoyed contributing to the discussions at the Coursera forums in relation to that course, and I'm also taking greater advantage of the forums over at talkclassical.com.
In terms of the music I've been enjoying, this includes Tan Dun's Eight Memories in Watercolor for piano, which is very oriental sounding and quite impressionist in a lot of ways. I have also been listening to an Eric Whitacre work for wind orchestra called Ghost Train Triptych - an very interesting work, which features a plethora of styles, and much use of imagery, especially in the first movement where he paints the moving train extraordinarily well.
Other composers I have been looking at include Alexander Scriabin, specially his Preludes for piano, Alan Hovhaness, with his Symphony No.50 'Mount St. Helens' which features a dramatic depiction of an erupting volcano, and some contemporary Japanese composers, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Toru Takemitsu, Isao Tomita, and Masao Ohki.
For the fifth assignment I have decided to choose the score reading option. I will be making a start (and hopefully good progress!) on this over the weekend, and I'll also be writing my response to my tutors feedback for assignment four.
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