Benjamin Britten, His Life and Operas

Benjamin Britten, His Life and Operas PDF Author: Eric Walter White
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520048942
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This new edition has been thoroughly revised and edited by John Evans (research scholar to the Britten Estate) who has updated the chronological list of published works and included in the bibliography the many books that have been written about the composer since his death in 1976. Although, as the title suggests, this book concentrates on Britten's operatic output, Mr White's account offers insights into the whole range of this prodigious composer's music. The text is lavishly illustrated with plates that reveal both the diversity of his operatic development and comprise a distinctive pictorial bibliography.

Benjamin Britten, His Life and Operas

Benjamin Britten, His Life and Operas PDF Author: Eric Walter White
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520048942
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book

Book Description
This new edition has been thoroughly revised and edited by John Evans (research scholar to the Britten Estate) who has updated the chronological list of published works and included in the bibliography the many books that have been written about the composer since his death in 1976. Although, as the title suggests, this book concentrates on Britten's operatic output, Mr White's account offers insights into the whole range of this prodigious composer's music. The text is lavishly illustrated with plates that reveal both the diversity of his operatic development and comprise a distinctive pictorial bibliography.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Paul Kildea
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141924306
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
Published to mark the beginning of the Britten centenary year in 2013, Paul Kildea's Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century is the definitive biography of Britain's greatest modern composer. In the eyes of many, Benjamin Britten was our finest composer since Purcell (a figure who often inspired him) three hundred years earlier. He broke decisively with the romantic, nationalist school of figures such as Parry, Elgar and Vaughan Williams and recreated English music in a fresh, modern, European form. With Peter Grimes (1945), Billy Budd (1951) and The Turn of the Screw (1954), he arguably composed the last operas - from any composer in any country - which have entered both the popular consciousness and the musical canon. He did all this while carrying two disadvantages to worldly success - his passionately held pacifism, which made him suspect to the authorities during and immediately after the Second World War - and his homosexuality, specifically his forty-year relationship with Peter Pears, for whom many of his greatest operatic roles and vocal works were created. The atmosphere and personalities of Aldeburgh in his native Suffolk also form another wonderful dimension to the book. Kildea shows clearly how Britten made this creative community, notably with the foundation of the Aldeburgh Festival and the building of Snape Maltings, but also how costly the determination that this required was. Above all, this book helps us understand the relationship of Britten's music to his life, and takes us as far into his creative process as we are ever likely to go. Kildea reads dozens of Britten's works with enormous intelligence and sensitivity, in a way which those without formal musical training can understand. It is one of the most moving and enjoyable biographies of a creative artist of any kind to have appeared for years. Paul Kildea is a writer and conductor who has performed many of the Britten works he writes about, in opera houses and concert halls from Sydney to Hamburg. His previous books include Selling Britten (2002) and (as editor) Britten on Music (2003). He was Head of Music at the Aldeburgh Festival between 1999 and 2002 and subsequently Artistic Director of the Wigmore Hall in London.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Neil Powell
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805097740
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
This centenary biography looks at the music, the life, and the legacy of the greatest British composer of the twentieth century, and his life partner, tenor Peter Pears.

Benjamin Britten: The Turn of the Screw

Benjamin Britten: The Turn of the Screw PDF Author: Patricia Howard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521283564
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This book is designed to introduce the non-specialist music lover to Britten's opera, The Turn of the Screw. The opening chapters by Vivien Jones and Patricia Howard deal with the literary source of the opera Oames's novella), the structure of the libretto, and the technique by which a short story was transformed into an opera. The central chapter, on the musical style and structures of the opera, includes an account of the composition process deduced from early sketches of the work by John Evans, an analysis of the unique form of the opera with a more detailed examination of the last scene by Patricia Howard, and an account of the significance and effect of the orchestration by Christopher Palmer. Finally, Patricia Howard traces the stage history of the work, from its initial reception in Venice in 1954, through some seminal reinterpretations in the 1960s to its present established position in the repertoire. The book is generously illustrated and there is also a bibliography and discography.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Lucy Walker
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843835169
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
An essay collection which examines Britten's juvenilia, influences such as Shostakovich and Verdi, his opera Owen Wingrave and a libretto written by Australian novelist Patrick White with the hope of a future collaboration.

The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten

The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Mervyn Cooke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521574761
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten is a comprehensive guide to the composer's work, aimed both at the non-specialist and music student. It sheds light on both the composer's stylistic and personal development, offering new interpretations of his operatic works and discussing his characteristic working methods. Topics treated here in detail for the first time include Britten's work in the cinema in the 1930s, his lifelong pacifism and his strong interest in the music of the Far East; other chapters include reassessments of his relationship with W. H. Auden and his attitude towards childhood, comprehensive analyses of major works and a concise history of the Aldeburgh Festival. A distinguished team of contributors include some who worked with the composer during his lifetime, as well as leading representatives of the younger generation of Britten scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Operas of Benjamin Britten

The Operas of Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Claire Seymour
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781843833147
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Analysis of Britten's operatic works reveals opera as the natural medium through which he explored his private concerns.

Benjamin Britten in Context

Benjamin Britten in Context PDF Author: Vicki P Stroeher
Publisher: Composers in Context
ISBN: 1108496695
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
A thematically organised overview of the musical, social and cultural contexts for the multi-faceted career of this pivotal British composer.

Billy Budd

Billy Budd PDF Author: Mervyn Cooke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521387507
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
A detailed synopsis guides the reader through the musical and dramatic action of the opera, Billy Budd.

The Operas of Benjamin Britten

The Operas of Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Benjamin Britten
Publisher: Herbert Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
A reference work for all opera-lovers containing the librettos of all sixteen of Britten's Operas, revised against the composer's own music scores and illustrated with 140 pictures of set and costume designs for the earliest productions of each opera.