Recital: Arnold van Wyk's 'Night Music'

'Grief and the (im)possibility of Night Music'

Daniel-Ben Pienaar and Stephanus Muller

The South African composer Arnold van Wyk (1916-1983) spent some of his most productive years in England. The recital began with a performance of his large-scale piano work Night Music (1958) by Curzon Lecturer in Performance Studies at the Royal Academy of Music Daniel-Ben Pienaar, followed by reflections on a new book on van Wyk by musicologist Stephanus Muller.

The author read selected excerpts from his three-volume exploration of van Wyk, using these as prompts to reflect on the limits of autobiography, biography, catalogue and fiction, and as moments of destabilisation forcing academic writing beyond its entrenched orthodoxies.

A Merton College Music Society event.