Ilkley Literary Festival: Lord Byron’s Manfred and Its Musical Settings

2016 marks the bicentenary of Lord Byron’s dramatic poem ‘Manfred’. Popular as a play in the 19th century, it inspired incidental music by Robert Schumann and provided the stimulus for Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony. This fascinating event explores the relationship between Byron’s work and its musical settings, with speakers from the University of Leeds offering insights into ‘Manfred’ as a poem and excerpts from a previously unknown setting by English composer EJ Loder, rediscovered earlier this year in the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds.

Music performed by soloists and the chamber choir, Clothworkers Consort of Leeds, directed by Dr Bryan White.