A Production Thesis of Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera

A Production Thesis of Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera PDF Author: Joanne M. Jonson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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A Production Thesis of Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera

A Production Thesis of Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera PDF Author: Joanne M. Jonson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description


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 Studies

Benjamin Britten Studies PDF Author: Vicki P. Stroeher
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783271957
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
The shock of exile / Paul Kildea -- Britten, Paul Bunyan, and American-ness / Vicki P. Stroeher -- Collaborating with Corwin, CBS, and the BBC / Jenny Doctor -- An empire built on shingle / Justin Vickers -- Save me from those suffering boys / Byron Adams -- Britten's (and Pears's) Beloved / Louis Niebur -- Notes of unbelonging / Lloyd Whitesell -- Take these tokens that you may feel us near / Colleen Renihan -- Traces of Nō / Kevin Salfen -- Britten and the augmented sixth / Christopher Mark -- Quickenings of the heart / Philip Rupprecht -- Reviving Paul Bunyan / Danielle Ward-Griffin -- Striking a compromise / Thornton Miller -- From Boosey & Hawkes to Faber Music / Nicholas Clark -- The man himself / Lucy Walker -- Epilogue / Vicki P. Stroeher and Justin Vickers

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Neil Powell
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0805097759
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
This spellbinding centenary biography by Neil Powell looks at the music, the life, and the legacy of the greatest British composer of the twentieth century Benjamin Britten was born on November 22, 1913, in the East Suffolk town of Lowestoft. Displaying a passion and proficiency for music at an early age, to the delight of his mother, Edith, a talented amateur musician herself, he began composing music when he was only five years old. After studying at the Royal College of Music, Britten went on to write documentary scores for the General Post Office Film Unit, where he met and collaborated with the poet W. H. Auden. Of more lasting importance was Britten's introduction in 1937 to the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become the inspirational center of his emotional and musical life. Their partnership lasted nearly four decades, during a dangerous time when homosexuality was illegal in England. Conscientious objectors, Britten and Pears followed Auden to America before the war began in 1939. While there, they joined the extraordinary Brooklyn ménage of George Davis, Louis MacNeice, and Paul Bowles. Eventually intense homesickness, provoked in part by George Crabbe's poem "Peter Grimes," drove the pair home to East Anglia in 1942 and gave Britten the inspiration for his finest opera. Throughout his career, Britten did not want modern music to be just for "the cultured few" and instead always composed his music to be "listenable-to." The shared quotidian lives of Britten and Pears unfold in this intimate biography and the story of two men who created a truly remarkable legacy.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Paul Kildea
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141924306
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 870

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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: Peter J. Hodgson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135580308
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This work constitutes the largest and most comprehensive research guide ever published about Benjamin Britten. Entries survey the most significant published materials relating to the composer, including bibliographies, catalogs, letters and documents, conference reports, biographies, and studies of Britten's music.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Stewart R. Craggs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313073945
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Benjamin Britten was arguably the greatest English composer of his time. His music crossed boundaries of genre and form to include opera, ballet, orchestral and chamber music, and film and incidental music. The result of twenty years of research, ^IBenjamin Britten^R provides up-to-date and comprehensive details about Britten's life and music, including works, performances, and recordings--an effort never before undertaken. Certain to be of use to any scholar of British music or 20th century composition, this reference work is an invaluable addition to the literature on this important artist. Following a brief biography of the subject, author Stewart Craggs provides a complete list of works and performances, arranged by genre; a discography, and an annotated bibliography. Rounding out the volume are two lists of compositions, one arranged alphabetically and the other chronologically, and a general index.

Essays on Benjamin Britten from a Centenary Symposium

Essays on Benjamin Britten from a Centenary Symposium PDF 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.

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.

On Mahler and Britten

On Mahler and Britten PDF Author: Philip Reed
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 9780851156149
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
In February 1995 Donald Mitchell, the foremost authority on the life and works of Gustav Mahler and Benjamin Britten, celebrated his seventieth birthday. To mark this event, the present Festschrift has been compiled under the editorship of Philip Reed. Distinguished composers, scholars, colleagues and friends from around the world have written on aspects of the two composers closest to Mitchell's heart - Mahler and Britten - to produce a volume which not only reflects some of the latest thinking on this pair of remarkable figures in the music of our century, but which also pays full tribute to the impact of Mitchell's own work on these composers over the last fifty years. The volume includes the fullest bibliography of Mitchell's writings yet compiled.