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This lecture examines the fascination surrounding works that are left unfinished at their composers’ deaths. It also looks at the urge that certain of us have to complete these uncompleted works, however unwisely and however unbidden.
We will trace the musical, visual and choreographical consequences of this new trend through several later Diaghilev ballets: Parade (Satie/Picasso), Chout (Prokofiev/Larionov), Le Pas d’Acier (Prokofiev/Yakulov).
Sydney’s botanic garden, founded in the early nineteenth century, was expected to ship new plants 'home' to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from where they could be transplanted to other colonial gardens, to see if they could become valuable new crops to enrich the British Empire.
Diaghilev found that the Oriental style that had been cultivated by Russian composers was a perfect match for the Parisians’ love of exoticism, and he started to commission new ballets for this market niche.
This lecture will begin with Bacon’s imagined garden, then consider the long-term promise of the experimental or scientific garden, which would eventually lead to today’s biotechnologies.