Month: December 2013

Peter Sheppard Skӕrved, violinist

On Friday 13th December between 18.30 and 20.00, I am performing in a concert in the Enlightenment Gallery, setting up a musical conversation between past and present, one that is reflective of the ideas of renewal and rediscovery summed up in the word ‘Enlightenment’. Music of the 1600s and 1700s, by Giuseppe Torelli, Nicola Matteis, and Johann Jakob Walther will be played alongside brand new works, including one by leading composer David Gorton, responding to the challenge of the past.

David Gorton played a central role in my 2006 intervention in the Enlightenment Gallery, when 11 international composers created new work in conversation with my ideas about the space and the collection. Gorton’s new work takes a bold imaginative leap, inspired by the Enlightenment’s ‘discovery of the past’: how might we, in 2013, re-imagine musicians of the Enlightenment reviving, exploring, the music and the works…

It has been suggested to me many times that I should keep a blog to track and locate my progress through my PhD.  I have decided now is the right moment.  This blog aims to record the second half of my PhD, or at least spur me on to get to the second half and the finish line.  Its aim is to record exhibition visits, collate useful websites and bits and pieces of information and try to shape my thoughts into something more organised than the darker recesses of my sketchbooks.