All Program Dates
November 11, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm ET
December 9, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm ET
January 13, 2026 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm ET
February 10, 2026 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm ET
Registration
Tuition for this course is $200. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
This program is for those 18 and older.
Registration opens for Delancey Society members on Friday, August 22, for Rosenbach members on Friday, August 29, and for the general public on Friday, September 5. Registration opens at 12:00 p.m. ET.
Description
Musician and novelist Wesley Stace presents a unique seminar experience, an opportunity to read works of literature that attempt to capture, on the page, the essence of music. Stace writes in his preface, "Music is the universal language of mankind (Longfellow said it first, apparently) so the opportunities it affords writers are many, and these opportunities have appealed to almost all writers. The stories in this collection are told in a multiplicity of voices via narrators variously reliable, unreliable, omniscient and invisible, by writers of the Harlem Renaissance and the Southern Gothic, by French and Russian realists, Bloomsbury modernists, Indian fabulists, American sci-fi fantasists and postmodernists, and British satirists.” In this seminar, you will read Music Stories, the Everyman anthology edited by Stace, and explore the world of literary music in a discussion led by Stace.
Instructor
Wesley Stace was born in Hastings, East Sussex in 1965. He released many albums under the name John Wesley Harding, before switching back to his birth name for more recent recordings, including 2021’s Late Style. He has recorded duets with, among others, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, and Rosanne Cash. Stace has published four novels, including the international bestseller Misfortune, and recently co-wrote Mark Morris’s memoir Out Loud. He also created Cabinet of Wonders, a monthly show that plays at New York City’s City Winery, and which The New Yorker called “one of the finest nights of entertainment this city has to offer.” He has taught at Princeton, Swarthmore, and Fairleigh-Dickinson, and writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Philadelphia. Stace has led courses for the Rosenbach on David Copperfield, Tristram Shandy, and a year-long seminar through the twelve novels of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time.