Max’s Lunch - The Lost World of the Forgotten Composers: Music and the Politics of Culture

Free entry, no registration required.

All welcome - free lunch provided.

On a warm summer’s evening a few years ago, I returned home holding several first editions and a sheaf of handwritten manuscripts of piano music. They had been given to me earlier that day by Claude Tomasi, who had been named after the celebrated composer Claude Debussy, by his father, the French-Corsican conductor and composer Henri Tomasi (1901-1971). Unlike Debussy though, Henri Tomasi didn’t make it into the history books and much of his music is unheard. And yet, researching his life and works, I was to discover a charismatic, complex, original and politically engaged composer whose music shaped an emergent but marginalised 20th century Corsican musical identity and contributed to existential, humanist and absurdist philosophy in the post-war years.

In this talk, through the lens of Tomasi’s life, I will bring into focus the way networks, practices, migration, cultural histories, geographies and representations of music, can help us offer a new and more nuanced perspective on music history.

Max’s Lunches” are a series of free sandwich lunches with interesting speakers talking about interesting things followed by discussion. Please do come along if you would like. The topics are all presented in a way that can be understood by a general audience and you are always welcome to arrive late or leave early if you need to.