Echoes of Eden: The Garden as Symbol in Art, Music, and Literature

From the story of humanity’s first home in the Garden of Eden, gardens have been a favorite setting for stories, paintings, poetry, and works of music.  This talk examines the ways that painters, poets, and musicians use gardens as settings.  What do those gardens tell us?  Using wide-ranging examples from such writers as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Jerzy Kosinsky, composers from Mozart to Wagner, and painters from Rubens to Renoir, David Schildkret demonstrates common themes gardens communicate and decodes their use across art forms.

David Schildkret is Professor of Choral Music at Arizona State University, where he teaches a variety of courses on music and the humanities.  These include “Laughing to Music” and courses on score study and musical masterworks.  Previously, he taught at the University of Rochester, Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and Salem College in North Carolina, where he was dean of the School of Music.  Both his teaching and published work focus on connections between music and various other pursuits:  writing, painting, history, and architecture among them.  He has lectured frequently around the state of Arizona, nationally, and internationally through the Fulbright Scholars program.