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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.
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.
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.
Author: Graham Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351218204
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
This collection of eight 'lectures' by internationally acclaimed pianist, Graham Johnson, is based on a series of concert talks given at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as part of the Benjamin Britten festival in 2001. The focus of the book is on Britten's songs, starting with his earliest compositions in the genre. Graham Johnson suggests that the nature of Britten's creativity is especially apparent in his setting of poetry, that he becomes the poet's alter-ego. A chapter on Britten's settings of Auden and Eliot explores the particular influences these writers brought to bear at opposite poles of the composer's life. The inspiration of fellow musicians is also discussed, with a chapter devoted to Britten's time in Russia and his friendship with the Rostropovitch family. Closer to home, the book places in context Britten's folksong settings, illustrating how he subverted the English folksong tradition by refusing to accept previous definitions of what constituted national loyalty. Drawing on letters and diaries, and featuring a number of previously unpublished photographs, this book illuminates aspects of Britten's songs from the personal perspective of the pianist who worked closely with Peter Pears after Benjamin Britten was unable to perform through illness. Johnson worked with Pears on learning the role of Aschenbach in 'Death in Venice' and was official pianist for the first master class given by Peter Pears at Snape in 1972.
Author: Michael Oliver
Publisher: Phaidon Press
ISBN: 9780714847719
Category : Music
Languages : it
Pages : 240
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Book Description
A portrait of the life and work of Benjamin Britten.
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.
Author: John Bridcut
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571260926
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Britten's Children confronts the edgy subject of the composer's obsessional yet strangely innocent relationships with adolescent boys. One of the hallmarks of Benjamin Britten's music is his use of boys' voices, and John Bridcut uses this to create a fresh prism through which to view the composer's life. Interweaving discussion of the music he wrote for and about children with interviews with the boys whom Britten befriended, Bridcut explores the influence of these unique friendships - notably with the late David Hemmings - and how they helped Britten maintain links with his own happy childhood. In a remarkable part of the book Bridcut tells for the first time the full story of Britten's love affair in the 1930s with the 18-year-old German Wulff Scherchen, son of the conductor Hermann Scherchen. As Paul Hoggart of The Times commented, 'this type of love belonged to an emotional landscape that has vanished for ever, and we are the poorer for it'. Since making the film, the author has extended his research to include friendships Britten had with children which have not previously been documented. The documentary Britten's Children won the Royal Philharmonic Society's 2005 Award for Creative Communication: 'this serious and beautiful film explored one aspect of a composer's life in great depth. Avoiding the temptation of sensationalism, Britten's Children was imaginatively researched and both touching and revelatory'.
Author: Vicki P. Stroeher
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783271957
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 556
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Book Description
Bringing together established authorities and new voices, this book takes off the 'protective arm' around Britten.
Author: Quinn Patrick Ankrum
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443896020
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Coming to terms with Britten’s music is no easy task. The complex, often contradictory language associated with Britten’s style likely stems from his double interest in progressive composition and immediate connection with a broad, popular audience – an apparent paradox in the splintered musical culture of the 20th century – as well as from complicated truths in his own life, such as his love for a country that accepted neither his sexuality nor his politics. As a result, the attempt to describe his music can tell us as much about our own biases and the inadequacies of our analytic tools as it does about the music itself. Such audits of our scholarly language and strategies are vital in light of the still-murky view we have of twentieth century music. This opportunity for academic self-reflection is the reason Britten studies such as this book are so important. The essays included here challenge assumptions about musical constructs, relationships between text and music, and the influences of age, spirituality, and personal relationships on compositional technique. Part One offers nine essays originally compiled for a symposium designed to recognize the composer’s unique and varied contributions to music. The authors include performers, musicologists, and music theorists, and their work will appeal to a wide diversity of readers. The topics and methodologies range from archival research and analysis of text and music to theoretical modelling using techniques such as set theory, metric theory, and prolongation. While the papers were initially conceived in isolation from one another, the collaborative focus of the symposium created opportunities for authors to expose points of intersection. This deliberate reconciliation of lines of inquiry has yielded a more balanced and unified collection of essays than typically found in a simple record of proceedings. Furthermore, the chapters presented here benefit from the wealth of Britten research produced since the 2013 centenary. Part Two provides an account of the symposium performances and lecture recitals that accompanied and enriched the academic presentations. The reader will encounter fully the journey taken by symposium presenters, participants, and attendees by reviewing the concerts, lecture recitals, and papers in the context of the full symposium program.
Author: Christopher Wintle
Publisher: Poetics of Music
ISBN: 9780955608797
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 125
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Book Description
Christopher Wintle's in-depth examination of Britten's Notturno includes a full set of sketches, the printed score, an introductory essay and two appendices, providing a new model for the study of Britten's work in general.
Author: Philip Rupprecht
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199794863
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Rethinking Britten offers a fresh portrait of one of the most widely performed composers of the 20th century. In twelve essays, a diverse group of contributors--both established authorities and leading younger voices--explore a significant portion of Benjamin Britten's extensive oeuvre across a range of genres, including opera, song cycle, and concert music. Well informed by earlier writings on the composer's professional career and private life, Rethinking Britten also uncovers many fresh lines of inquiry, from the Lord Chamberlain's last-minute censorship of the Rape of Lucretia libretto to psychoanalytic understandings of Britten's staging of gender roles; from the composer's delight in schoolboy humor to his operatic revival of Purcellian dance rhythms; from his creative responses to Cold-War-era internationalism to his dealings with BBC Television. Each essay blends awareness of overarching contexts with insights into particular expressive achievements. Balancing biographical, archival, and analytic commentary with cultural and historical criticism, Rethinking Britten broadens the interpretive context surrounding all phases of Britten's career and is essential reading for scholars and fans alike.
