Spring 2024 Analysis Salon
POLYPHONY POWER PACK!
Tallis, Bryd, Palestrina, Victoria!!! Come explore a POWER PACK of Renaissance composers and their (sometimes unwitting)contributions to the creation of tonality as we know it. If you’re like me, you were (poorly) taught that Bach just fell out the sky! Nope, his predecessors created wonders that laid the foundation of the most intricate and infinite musical system ever invented: the tonal system.
Join us LIVE or via Zoom Friday May 31st at 7pm. Suggested donation: $20, but not required!
Analysis Salon is BACK!!!
Remember how we all used to get together, drink wine, eat cheese, and talk music? (before the stupid ruiner pandemic) Well, we're doing it again. One night only, November 8, 2023 at 7pm in West Philadelphia. (Or on Zoom.) Suggested donation: $20, but not required!
Fill out the form below to get live address or Zoom link.
Analysis Salon
From 1904-1978 Nadia Boulanger held her esteemed Wednesday afternoon group class and evening salons. Copland, Stravinsky, Fauré, Bernstein, Paul Valéry, and many other luminaries across the arts were frequent attendees. The works of Bach provided the foundation of knowledge and ideas that were meticulously traced through the ages.
In this same tradition Dr. Boyle offers Analysis Salons from his studio in Philadelphia. Each evening begins with a 7-7:30 wine and cheese reception, an analysis lecture from 7:30-8:30, and light refreshment and discussion to follow. Don't live near Philadelphia? Each lecture can be streamed live or watched anytime thereafter.
Previous Available Analysis Salon Lectures
All previous Analysis Salon lectures found below can be streamed at any time for $15 each. Access to ALL previous episodes can be purchased for $200.
Please contact here to purchase, noting which episodes you would like to view.
Analysis Salon Season 6
In uncertain times, the familiar is doubly reassuring. This abbreviated season - like so much cut short this year - offers just two Salons, covering my two favorites: Bach and Chopin. In the first, we’ll discuss the unifying properties of Meta-Contrapuntal Design in Bach’s F Major from WTC2. The questions of light and dark, color-shading, and modality will be explored in our second lecture, with Chopin’s Eb minor Etude as the palette from which to draw.
Wednesday December 16, 2020, 3pm EST
s6e1 - The Tower on the Hill: Meta-Contrapuntal Design - Bach WTC Book 2 F Major
Wednesday May 5, 2021, 3pm EST
s6 e2 - Bunnies and Skeletons: Chiaroscuro and Modality - Chopin Etude Op. 10 No. 6
Analysis Salon Season 5
“Dear me!How long is art! And short is our life!”
Goethe, Faust
A circus, a zoo, a menagerie…. Beginnings and middles and endings…..
In Season 5 of Analysis Salon, we trace time in music as a parallel to the experience of all living things; created from the smallest building blocks, growing in complexity and knowledge, and finally looking back on all that came before.
Friday September 27, 2019
s5 e1 Omnium Rerum Princpia Parva Sunt - Bach WTC Book 1 Bb Minor
Wednesday January 15, 2020
s5 e2 The Unicorn - Schumann Davidsblundertanze, Op 6
Thursday March 19, 2020 !!!!!!!CANCELLED DUE TO STUPID CORONA-VIRUS!!!!!!!!
s5 e3 The Gorgon - Chopin Ballade No. 1 Op 23
Wednesday May 27, 2020 Special time: 3pm EDT
s5 e4 The Well-spring - Bach Chorale ‘Christ ist erstanden’
Analysis Salon Season 4
Season four begins where we like to begin – where so many paths begin; with Bach. From the multitudes of possibilities he uncovered, we trace a zig-zag line back and forth between composers adding from without (Chopin, Bartok, Debussy) and building from within (Brahms, Duruflé), all holding to the rigor and structure that we like to explore in Analysis Salon.
s4 e1 The Great Expanse - Bach WTC Book 1 C# Major
s4 e2 Modality and Subterfuge - Chopin Mazurkas Op. 24 Nos. 2 & 4
s4 e3 Synthesis and the Depth of the Ocean - Brahms Zwei Gesang, Op. 91
s4 e4 A New Semiotic - Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste
s4 e5 The Singularity - Duruflé Requiem
s4 e6 The Road to Damascus - Chopin Prelude No. 17, Beethoven Pathetique
s4 e7 Harmonie du soir - Franck Violin Sonata
Analysis Salon Season 3
Season three of Analysis Salon focuses on composer’s efforts to push toward a sense of sublimity through the expansion and transcendence of harmonic, contrapuntal, and formal dicta of music - including the use of non-tonal concepts - in choral music, chamber music, art-song, works for keyboard, orchestral music, and opera spanning 400 years.
s3 e1 On the Eve of Tonality - Tallis If ye love me, Byrd Ave verum corpus
s3 e2 The Grand Duality - Bach WTC 1 Eb Major
s3 e3 Up the Long Ladder - Schumann Trio No. 1, Op. 63
s3 e4 12-tone Designs and the Supernatural - Chopin Nocturne No. 12, Britten A Mid Summer Night’s Dream
s3 e5 The Frivolous and the Sublime - Poulenc Banalites
s3 e6 Ghosts of the Past, Shades of the Future - Berg Violin Concerto
s3 e7 “Car j'ai de grands departs inassouvis en moi” - Fauré L’horizon chimerique
Analysis Salon Season 2
s2 e2 The Synthesis of the Old and the New, the Human and the Divine
Barber Prayers of Kierkegaard
s2 e3 Meta-Counterpoint: The Farther Shore Part 1 - Schumann Kriesleriana
s2 e4 Meta-Counterpoint: The Farther Shore Part 1I - Schumann Kriesleriana
s2 e5 Meta-Counterpoint: The Farther Shore Part 1II - Schumann Kriesleriana
s2 e6 The Elegance of Species Design - Schumann Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Op. 26 No. 4, Faure Clair de lune, Op. 46 - 2
s2 e7 The Power of the Overtone Series and the Will of the Pitch - Chopin Nocturnes Op. 27
s2 e8 Hypermetrics; The Perception of and the Desire for Symmetry - Chopin Impromptu Op. 51, Poulenc Gloria