Celebrating Mátyás Seiber: Songs for Voice and Guitar

Join us for this lunchtime recital celebrating the 120th anniversary of the birth of composer Mátyás Seiber (1905 – 1960). Katalin Koltai and Tyrone Landau present an exciting programme of Seiber's music for guitar and voice, focusing on unpublished works found in the composer’s manuscripts preserved at the British Library. A special treat will be the performance of three recently discovered 'Minnaloushe Songs', settings of the poem, The Cat and the Moon, by W. B. Yeats. Chris Scobie (Curator of Music Manuscripts & Archives) will also give an overview of the manuscripts and archival sources at the British Library relating to Mátyás Seiber's extraordinary life and career.

Mátyás Seiber was born in Budapest in 1905 and emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1935. His highly-successful career included teaching and directorship of the first academic jazz course, as well as many years at Morley College in London. His own compositions were influenced by everything from cabaret and jazz to serialism and folk song. In addition to many concert works, he also created the soundtracks to several films of the 1950s, including Animal Farm (1954).