Author: J. P. E. Harper-Scott
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108416365
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
This thematic examination of Britten's operas focuses on the way that ideology is presented on stage. To watch or listen is to engage with a vivid artistic testament to the ideological world of mid-twentieth-century Britain. But it is more than that, too, because in many ways Britten's operas continue to proffer a diagnosis of certain unresolved problems in our own time. Only rarely, as in Peter Grimes, which shows the violence inherent in all forms of social and psychological identification, does Britten unmistakably call into question fundamental precepts of his contemporary ideology. This has not, however, prevented some writers from romanticizing Britten as a quiet revolutionary. This book argues, in contrast, that his operas, and some interpretations of them, have obscured a greater social and philosophical complicity that it is timely - if at the same time uncomfortable - for his early twenty-first-century audiences to address.
Author: Rachel Cowgill
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843835673
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
Opera, that most extravagant of the performing arts, is infused with the contexts of power-brokering and cultural display in which it was conceived and experienced. For individual operas such contexts have shifted over time and new meanings emerged, often quite remote from those intended by the original collaborators; but tracing this ideological dimension in a work's creation and reception enables us to understand its cultural and political role more clearly - sometimes conflicting with its status as art and sometimes enhancing it. This collection is a Festschrift in honour of Julian Rushton, one of the most distinguished opera scholars of his generation and highly regarded for his innovative studies of Gluck, Mozart and Berlioz, among many others. Colleagues, associates and former students pay tribute to his work with essays highlighting the interplay between opera, art and ideology across three centuries. Three broad themes are opened up from a variety of approaches: nationalism, cosmopolitanism and national opera; opera, class and the politics of enlightenment; and opera and otherness. British opera is represented by studies of Grabu, Purcell, Dibdin, Holst, Stanford and Britten, but the collection sustains a truly European perspective rounded out with essays on French opera funding, Bizet, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Puccini, Janacek, Nielsen, Rimsky-Korsakov and Schreker. Several works receive some of their first extended discussion in English. RACHEL COWGILL is Professor of Musicology at Liverpool Hope University. DAVID COOPER is Professor of Music and Technology at the University of Leeds. CLIVE BROWN is Professor of Applied Musicology at the University of Leeds. Contributors: MARY K. HUNTER, CLIVE BROWN, PETER FRANKLIN, RALPH LOCKE, DOMINGOS DE MASCARENHAS, DAVID CHARLTON, KATHARINE ELLIS, BRYAN WHITE, PETER HOLMAN, RACHEL COWGILL, ROBERTA MONTEMORRA MARVIN, DAVID COOPER, RICHARD GREENE, J.P.E. HARPER-SCOTT, DANIEL GRIMLEY, STEPHEN MUIR, JOHN TYRRELL.
Author: Nina Penner
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253052424
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater is the first systematic exploration of how sung forms of drama tell stories. Through examples from opera's origins to contemporary musicals, Nina Penner examines the roles of character-narrators and how they differ from those in literary and cinematic works, how music can orient spectators to characters' points of view, how being privy to characters' inner thoughts and feelings may evoke feelings of sympathy or empathy, and how performers' choices affect not only who is telling the story but what story is being told. Unique about Penner's approach is her engagement with current work in analytic philosophy. Her study reveals not only the resources this philosophical tradition can bring to musicology but those which musicology can bring to philosophy, challenging and refining accounts of narrative, point of view, and the work-performance relationship within both disciplines. She also considers practical problems singers and directors confront on a daily basis, such as what to do about Wagner's Jewish caricatures and the racism of Orientalist operas. More generally, Penner reflects on how centuries-old works remain meaningful to contemporary audiences and have the power to attract new, more diverse audiences to opera and musical theater. By exploring how practitioners past and present have addressed these issues, Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater offers suggestions for how opera and musical theater can continue to entertain and enrich the lives of 21st-century audiences.
Author: Tsung-Han Tsai
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108952445
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
This book examines the political resonances of E. M. Forster's representations of music, offering readings of canonical and overlooked works. It reveals music's crucial role in his writing and draws attention to a previously unacknowledged eclecticism and complexity in Forster's ideological outlook. Examining unobtrusive musical allusions in a variety of Forster's writings, this book demonstrates how music provided Forster with a means of reflecting on race and epistemology, material culture and colonialism, literary heritage and national character, hero-worship and war, and gender and professionalism. It unveils how Forster's musical representations are mediated through a matrix of ideas and debates of his time, such as those about evolution, empire, Britain's relationship with the Continent, the rise of fascism, and the emergence of musicology as an academic discipline.
Author: Sarah Collins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108481493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Examines the role of musical figures within 'late modernism', presenting a new understanding of the politics and aesthetics of lateness.
Author: Philip Rupprecht
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199794804
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
This book offers a new account of the composer's enduring popularity. 12 essays by a group of leading senior and emerging scholars offer fresh historical and interpretive contexts for all phases of Britten's career.
Author: Daniel Albright
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472557476
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Great Shakespeareans offers 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. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner and Britten to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.
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.
Author: Igor Toronyi-Lalic
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241967589
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 79
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Book Description
Benjamin Britten was one of the most important and unusual figures in twentieth-century music. This is the perfect introduction to his many wonderful works and his fascinating, controversial life. Benjamin Britten single-handedly transformed the reputation of British classical music. The enormous popular appeal of his great works, such as Peter Grimes (1945) and the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), make him the most successful opera composer of any born in the twentieth century. But his success was not without controversy and pain: he was accused of fleeing Britain to avoid military service, he was widely known to be sexually obsessed with boys and he suffered an astonishing array of illnesses. This short book combines a colourful overview of his life with pithy descriptions of all of his major musical works, providing an intimate portrait of this highly unusual man and a persuasive account of his influences, reputation and importance. Each chapter tackles a key episode and theme in his life, from his first compositions at the age of 5, his early friendship and collaboration with W H Auden and the beginnings of his life-long relationship with the tenor Peter Pears, through to his great musical successes and the establishment of the influential, if tempestuous, Aldeburgh Festival, as well as his failures, such as his coronation opera Gloriana (known as 'Boriana') and being satirised by Dudley Moore in Beyond the Fringe - and ending with frank discussions of his naïve politics, his troubling sexuality and his glorious musical legacy. Published to coincide with his 100th anniversary of his birth, this is the perfect introduction to a towering figure of British culture. Igor Toronyi-Lalic is a critic and curator. He writes regularly on music for, among others, The Times and Sunday Telegraph. He is a founder of theartsdesk.com, the author of What's That Thing? (2012), a report on public art, and co-director of the London Contemporary Music Festival.
Author: D. J. Hoek
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 1461700795
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
This new volume incorporates all entries from the previous editions by Arthur Wenk, expanding to cover writings drawn from periodicals, theses, dissertations, books, and Festschriften from 1940 to 2000. Over 9,000 references to analyses of works by over 1,000 composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are included.
