Britten Experienced

Britten Experienced PDF Author: Peter Franklin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040040578
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
Who writes the books we read about music that excites us, and why? Is ‘classical music’ all about class? Related questions underpin this partly polemical study, written by an academic who believes that the Humanities, to be really humane, must confront their methods and aims. Two recent studies of Benjamin Britten have specifically interested the author, who was educated in a world where the composer was a living subject of criticism and praise, his works reflecting values, worries and dramas that were not just about ‘music’. Franklin’s response is to question the recent writers, proposing that, like theirs, his own story conditioned when and how he experienced Britten. This he unfolds autobiographically in and around the discussion of specific works. Recalling his encounters with the composer as a schoolboy, as a student and opera-goer, and then as a teacher, he challenges recent assertions about Britten and modernism in the period.

Britten Experienced

Britten Experienced PDF Author: Peter Franklin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040040578
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
Who writes the books we read about music that excites us, and why? Is ‘classical music’ all about class? Related questions underpin this partly polemical study, written by an academic who believes that the Humanities, to be really humane, must confront their methods and aims. Two recent studies of Benjamin Britten have specifically interested the author, who was educated in a world where the composer was a living subject of criticism and praise, his works reflecting values, worries and dramas that were not just about ‘music’. Franklin’s response is to question the recent writers, proposing that, like theirs, his own story conditioned when and how he experienced Britten. This he unfolds autobiographically in and around the discussion of specific works. Recalling his encounters with the composer as a schoolboy, as a student and opera-goer, and then as a teacher, he challenges recent assertions about Britten and modernism in the period.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Graham Elliott
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191541710
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Since Britten's death in 1976, numerous articles and books have been written about his life and work. Much has been made of the strong influences of his pacifism and his homosexuality. It is often suggested that Britten felt himself to be an outsider from 'normal' society, and that this accounts for the his concern to portray the 'outsider' in his operas. There is no doubt that this is an important aspect of Britten's art, but the present work attempts to show that his music embraces much wider and more universal concerns, and in addressing those concerns there is a clearly defined pattern of spiritual influence. Part One of the book examines Britten's early life, and the strong presence which the Church had in his childhood and adolescence. It explores the way in which certain spiritual influences were first manifested, and how, like the more specifically musical 'themes' which Donald Mitchell has noted, they can be traced throughout Britten's life and work. The author was privileged to have conversations with two clergymen who were influential in Britten's life, as well as gathering valuable insights through a long series of conversations with Sir Peter Pears. Part Two examines a wide range of the composer's music in which a spiritual dimension can be traced. The specifically liturgical music has received rather less critical notice than Britten's larger works. The music is discussed here, and shown to possess musical characteristics in common with the larger works. Britten could not be described as a conventional Christian; still less is it true to describe him, as Eric Walter White has done, as 'keen, wherever possible, to work within the framework of the Church of England'. Nevertheless, his spirituality was rooted in the religious experience of his childhood. This book seeks to demonstrate that Britten retained a sense of the Christian values absorbed in childhood and adolescence, and that these - along with the specifically Christian heritage of plainsong - were strongly influential in his choice and treatment of themes.

Britten's Children

Britten's Children PDF 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'.

Britten's Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs

Britten's Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs PDF Author: Gordon Cameron Sly
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783277718
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Presents a first analytical study that looks at the overarching designs of Benjamin Britten's John Donne, Thomas Hardy and William Blake solo song cycles. By questioning when a group of songs ought to be understood not merely as a collection, but as a cycle, Sly shows that Britten's personal selection and arrangement is indispensable to understanding these cycles' extra-musical communication. The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Winter Words (poems by Hardy) and Songs and Proverbs of William Blake - composed in 1945, 1953 and 1965 respectively - each represent a philosophical exploration. The terrains set out by the three poets are distinct, but also engage one another in important and unexpected ways. Their cyclic architectures are expressed not only in their poetic arrangement, but in their musical settings. Key relationships and motive remain central for Britten. Keys convey a network of interconnections, create groupings of songs, and establish levels of tonal affinity or distance. Motive - often intervals that can fit into any melodic, harmonic or rhythmic context - is used to create aural affinities between or among individual songs. This book also offers a broader narrative revealing Britten's evolving philosophical convictions in post-war Britain. While it may not be the case that Britten intended any broader philosophical comment, the works together outline the cold and brittle state that emerges from loss and aligns with their composer's increasingly stark outlook on humanity.

Distant Melodies

Distant Melodies PDF Author: Edward Dusinberre
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226823431
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
"A combination of memoir and music history, Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home is a journey of exploration by a member of one of the world's leading string quartets into the related ideas of home, displacement, and retreat in the lives and chamber music of four composers: Antonín Dvořák, Edward Elgar, Béla Bartók and Benjamin Britten. Dvórâk, Bartók, and Britten's American experiences, and Elgar's Piano Quintet and the English landscapes that inspired it, provide the author with a means for exploring the ways in which a piece of music may affirm or alter one's sense of home. The life experiences and notions of development and recapitulation in the music of these composers are the subject of a book that grapples with the universal human predicament of how best to balance past, present, and future, to remember faithfully and yet to move forward. Distant Melodies explores the experience of living with a piece of music over time and the ways in which engaging more closely with these composers has changed the author's own perception of home. This is a book for a wide and diverse audience: professional and amateur musicians, musicologists, and those who follow the careers of modern performing musicians, but more broadly for anyone for whom music provides solace and companionship. It helps us to understand how a piece of music and its associations can help us navigate our daily lives"--

Letters from a Life Volume 3 (1946-1951)

Letters from a Life Volume 3 (1946-1951) PDF Author: Benjamin Britten
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571279937
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 781

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Book Description
The third volume of the annotated selected letters of composer Benjamin Britten covers the years 1946-51, during which he wrote many of his best-known works, founded and developed the English Opera Group and the Aldeburgh Festival, and toured widely in Europe and the United States as a pianist and conductor.Correspondents include librettists Ronald Duncan (The Rape of Lucretia), Eric Crozier (Albert Herring, Saint Nicolas, The Little Sweep) and E. M. Forster (Billy Budd); conductor Ernest Ansermet and composer Lennox Berkeley; publishers Ralph Hawkes and Erwin Stein of Boosey & Hawkes; and the celebrated tenor Peter Pears, Britten's partner. Among friends in the United States are Christopher Isherwood, Elizabeth Mayer and Aaron Copland, and there is a significant meeting with Igor Stravinsky.This often startling and innovative period is vividly evoked by the comprehensive and scholarly annotations, which offer a wide range of detailed information fascinating for both the Britten specialist and the general reader.Donald Mitchell contributes a challenging introduction exploring the interaction of life and work in Britten's creativity, and an essay examining for the first time, through their correspondence, the complex relationship between the composer and the writer Edward Sackville-West.

The Robert Shaw Reader

The Robert Shaw Reader PDF Author: Robert Shaw
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300128649
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
Symposium on Hate Wayne Downey, M.D. Notes on Hate and Hating Linda Mayes, M.D. Discussion of Downey's Notes on Hate and Hating Ernst Prelinger, Ph.D. Thoughts on Hate Edward R. Shapiro, M.D. Discussion of Prelinger's Thoughts on Hate Clinical papers Susan Sherkow, M.D. Further Reflections on the Watched Play State, Play Interruptions, and the Capacity to Play Alone Barbara Novak From Chaos to Developmental Growth Silvia M. Bell, Ph.D. Early Vulnerability in the Development in the Phallic Narcissistic Phase Howard M. Katz, M.D. Motor Action, Emotion, and Motive Papers on Technique M. Barrie Richmond, M.D. Counter Responses as Organizers in Adolescent Analysis and Therapy Lawrence N. Levenson, M.D. Resistance to Self-observation in Psychoanalytic Treatment Papers on Theory A. Scott Dowling, M.D. A Reconsideration of the Concept of Regression John M. Jemerin, M.D. Latency and the Capacity to Reflect on Mental States Harold Blum, M.D. Two Principles of Mental Functioning Contributions from Developmental Psychology Golan Shahar, Ph.D., et al. Representations in Action Susan A. Bers, Ph.D., et al. The Sense of Self in Anorexia Nervosa Patients

Great Shakespeareans Set III

Great Shakespeareans Set III PDF Author: Adrian Poole
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472578627
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1120

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Book Description
Great Shakespeareans presents a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. An essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.

Japan Experiences - Fifty Years, One Hundred Views

Japan Experiences - Fifty Years, One Hundred Views PDF Author: Hugh Cortazzi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134278977
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
This unique volume comprising writings and memoirs covering the half century since the end of the Pacific War, offers the reader a fascinating and remarkable collection of personal experiences of Japan across a wide spectrum.

Music and Sexuality in Britten

Music and Sexuality in Britten PDF Author: Philip Brett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520939123
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Philip Brett’s groundbreaking writing on Benjamin Britten altered the course of music scholarship in the later twentieth century. This volume is the first to gather in one collection Brett’s searching and provocative work on the great British composer. Some of the early essays opened the door to gay studies in music, while the discussions that Brett initiated reinvigorated the study of Britten’s work and inspired a generation of scholars to imagine "the new musicology." Addressing urgent questions of how an artist’s sexual, cultural, and personal identity feeds into specific musical texts, Brett examines most of Britten’s operas as well as his role in the British cultural establishment of the mid-twentieth century. With some of the essays appearing here for the first time, this volume develops a complex understanding of Britten’s musical achievement and highlights the many ways that Brett expanded the borders of his field.