St. Thomas scholar gives free talk on interpreting the Second Vatican Council.

DULUTH, MN - LeAnn House and Bill Bastian, both music faculty members at The College of St. Scholastica, will discuss the song cycle "Winterreise," at 3:40 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15, in the music hall in room 3625 of Tower Hall on campus. Their presentation is part of the College's monthly faculty colloquium lecture series. Admission is free and open to the public. 

House and Bastian will perform "Winterreise," words by Wilhelm Muller and music by Franz Schubert, in concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 2, in the Mitchell Auditorium as part of the College's 2012-2013 Cambiata Music Series. Bastian will sing tenor and House will play the piano. Tickets for the March 2 performance are $15 for adults, $10 for St. Scholastica students and staff. 

"Winterreise" is a virtual chamber opera for voice and piano, consisting of 24 songs. In it, a man describes the pain of a love relationship that has failed. He tells of how his hopes and dreams were dashed by the fickleness of his fiancé and how his faithfulness was repaid with scorn. 

During the colloquium discussion, House and Bastian will explore how Schubert's order of Muller's "Winterreise" poems creates an effective dramatic entity. Schubert originally discovered 12 of Muller's poems when they were published in a journal and set them to music, only to discover that Muller had written a dozen more. He set the second discovery of poems to music at the end of the first set, even though that was not the order intended by Muller. The presentation will last one hour that includes a 40-minute lecture followed by 20 minutes of questions and answers. Colloquium audiences typically include a mixture of students, faculty and community members.

For more information and to purchase tickets for the upcoming "Winterreise" show, contact the Spotlight box office at (218) 723-7000 or spotlight@css.edu. Spotlight.css.edu is the one-stop shop for all St. Scholastica arts and lectures information.

The College of St. Scholastica is regularly recognized as one of the finest colleges in the Midwest. The 2013 "America's Best Colleges" survey by U.S. News & World Report magazine ranks St. Scholastica in the top tier of Midwestern universities. The Washington Post has rated St. Scholastica as one of the nation's 100 "hidden gems" among U.S. colleges and universities.