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 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 Borough

The Borough PDF Author: George Crabbe
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3734026091
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Reproduction of the original: The Borough by George Crabbe

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.

Britten's Children

Britten's Children PDF Author: John Bridcut
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571228409
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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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'.

The Music of Benjamin Britten

The Music of Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Peter Evans
Publisher: London : J. M. Dent
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
"Peter Evans discusses all the published compositions in subdivisions of genre and period, and devotes a separate chapter to each opera. With the help of over 300 music examples and diagrams, he demonstrates Britten's mastery of the art of composition--of tonal and harmonic structures, thematic cast and transformation, textural variety and the imaginative deployment of voices and instruments."--Publisher's description.

Music and Sexuality in Britten

Music and Sexuality in Britten PDF Author: Philip Brett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520246101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Publisher description

Britten's Musical Language

Britten's Musical Language PDF Author: Philip Rupprecht
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139441280
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Blending insights from linguistic and social theories of speech, ritual and narrative with music-analytic and historical criticism, Britten's Musical Language offers interesting perspectives on the composer's fusion of verbal and musical utterance in opera and song and provides close interpretative studies of the major scores.

On Music

On Music PDF Author: Benjamin Britten
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198167143
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Benjamin Britten was a most reluctant public speaker. Yet his contributions were without doubt a major factor in the transformation during his lifetime of the structure of the art-music industry. This book, by bringing together all his published articles, unpublished speeches, drafts, and transcriptions of numerous radio interviews, explores the paradox of a reluctant yet influential cultural commentator, artist, and humanist. Whether talking about his own music, about the role of the artist in society, about music criticism, or wading into a debate on Soviet ideology at the height of the cold war, Britten always gave a performance which reinforced the notion of a private man who nonetheless saw the importance of public disclosure.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten PDF Author: Peter John Hodgson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780815317951
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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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: 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.