Ian Ritchie, Michael Trimble

Musician Ian Ritchie and behavioural neurologist Michael Trimble discuss ‘The Year Without a Summer’: the unprecedented climatic conditions of 1816 resulting from the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in modern-day Indonesia, which caused flooding, famine, disease, migration and poverty on a global scale. It was also a time of great invention and fundamental change. Can the remarkable Lieder composed by Beethoven and Schubert in Vienna that year offer any clues as to how they were affected?