Classical Slavery

Historian Bettany Hughes gives her personal take on the diverse cultures of the ancient world in this 2010 documentary series on More 4. The series begins with an examination of Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC to become the world’s first global centre of culture. The programme explores Alexandria’s role as a powerhouse of science and learning, and focuses on the female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia, the subject of the feature film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz.

In his liner-notes to Hermann Max’s C.P.E Bach oratorio Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu the German musicologist Peter Wollny writes: "In the second half of the eighteenth century the German oratorio was marked by two characteristics. The tendency toward a highly individual depiction of emotions and the avoidance of dramatic operatic plots." Therefore composers turned away from stories from the Old Testament which were so successfully used, for instance, by Handel for his dramatic oratorios, and focused rather on the person of Jesus Christ. Bach's oratorio Die Israeliten in der Wüste seems to contradict this statement.

Michelle Mayne-Graves and her Lifeline Quartet perform spirituals from the Civil War and earlier celebrating code songs for the Underground Railroad. These spirituals include hidden messages about maps, navigational strategies and timing for slaves to escape toward freedom in the Northern States and Canada. ""Wade in the Water"" serves as a reminder of where to walk in the rivers to make it harder for dogs to scent people escaping at night. "

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was, twice over and in two separate areas, one of the most renowned musical figures of the 20th century. Beginning at age seven, he was a celebrated performing prodigy, with a level of technical development and an understanding of music that awed such giants of the musical world as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, who delighted in his prodigious talent. Greeted in such circles as a new Mozart, from his teens until his thirties Korngold was the author of a series of compositions – orchestral works, operas (most notably Die Tote Stadt), and chamber works – that were uniquely popular and among the most critically acclaimed of their era.

Eric Nathan’s Some Favored Nook goes far beyond a setting of texts by Emily Dickinson and abolitionist and essayist Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Nathan’s piece is a dramatization of the relationship between these two historical figures, incorporating text settings of Dickinson’s poetry as well as a libretto by Mark Campbell that is woven from their correspondence. Nathan’s curation of that correspondence focused on themes related to slavery and the American Civil War. The result, performed here by soprano Tony Arnold, baritone William Sharp, and pianist Seth Knopp, is a poignant and intimate work that explores a friendship within the context of a nation in turmoil, ideologically and on the literal battlefield. Some Favored Nook allows the listener to reflect on another fraught time in the history of the United States, as we live through our own era of conflict.

“History is written by the victors” is a well-known quote often attributed to Winston Churchill. In war, that certainly is true, as the victors almost always write the history. In societal struggles, what seems to happen is that those who “come out on top” get to choose what is taught as history.

Historian Bettany Hughes gives her personal take on the diverse cultures of the ancient world in this 2010 documentary series on More 4. The series begins with an examination of Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC to become the world’s first global centre of culture. The programme explores Alexandria’s role as a powerhouse of science and learning, and focuses on the female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia, the subject of the feature film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz.