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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.
Author: Gordon Cameron Sly
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783277718
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 199
Get Book Here
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.
Author: Peter Auker
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 183765123X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
Investigates cinematic qualities in opera and reveals why Benjamin Britten's operas lend themselves to TV and film interpretations. Benjamin Britten's 1954 opera The Turn of the Screw, based on Henry James's ghost story, has been described by many critics and commentators as cinematic. Along with Peter Grimes, The Turn of the Screw is one of the most frequently televised or filmed of Britten's operas. Some of these productions have used location footage and/or studio work, and others are based on theatrical settings. This book explores the notion of cinematic opera in the context of The Turn of the Screw and filmed opera in general, and questions what inherent cinematic qualities exist in the work which make it particularly conducive for screen interpretation, an aspect of Britten's compositional style which has rarely been examined in detail before. Contrary to the prevailing narrative around Britten's disdain for cinema and television, the composer engaged with film as both a cinemagoer and film music composer early in his career and these experiences informed his compositional and dramatic choices. Archival research reveals clues to the composer's adaptation process. By tracing the progress from Henry James's original novella to operatic stage and screen production, via the development of Myfanwy Piper's libretto and Britten's score, the journey of adaptation is discussed in detail. A key part of the book looks at the subsequent interpretation of the opera on screen. Case studies evaluate eight directors' interpretations of the opera ranging from 1959 up to the 2020s. Included is a special study of Peter Morley's 1959 ITV version, which had previously been thought lost. This reveals the roots of Britten's subsequent engagement with screen media, culminating in his television opera Owen Wingrave. The book also briefly explores the influence of cinema on stage productions of the opera which have not been filmed.
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.
Author: Alex Ross
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429932880
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 706
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Book Description
Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.
Author: Evan Senior
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1056
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Book Description
Author: Richard Stokes
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141982551
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 2277
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Book Description
The Penguin Book of English Song anthologizes the work of 100 English poets who have inspired a host of different composers (some English, some not) to write vocal music. Each of the chapters, arranged chronologically from Chaucer to Auden, opens with a precis of the poet's life, work and, often, approach to music. Richard Stokes's notes and commentaries constantly illuminate the language and themes of the poems and their settings in unexpected ways. An awareness of how Ben Jonson based his famous poem 'Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes' on a Greek original, for example, increases our enjoyment of both the poem and the traditional song; knowledge of Thomas Hardy's relationships with women deepens our appreciation of songs by Ireland, Finzi, Britten and others; Charles Dibdin's 'Tom Bowling', played each year at the Last Night of the Proms, takes on a deeper resonance when we know that it was written after the death of his brother Tom, a sea captain struck by lightning in the Indian Ocean. Many composers of different nationalities appear, but the book remains quintessentially British, and includes pieces that have an established place in our national consciousness: 'Rule, Britannia' (James Thomson), 'Abide with me' (Henry Francis Lyte), 'Auld lang syne' (Robert Burns), 'Jerusalem' (William Blake), 'Once in royal David's city' (Mrs C. F. Alexander), and even 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star' (Jane Taylor). The poems are printed in their original versification and spelling, enabling us to trace the development of the English language as the book progresses. The volume presents a huge amount of information about English Song that will enlighten all those who delight in the fusion of words and music. The presence of minor as well as major poets and the unique principle of selection make The Penguin Book of English Song a highly original anthology of English verse.
Author: Laura Tunbridge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521896444
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
Investigates how other types of music have influenced the scope of the song cycle, from operas and symphonies to popular song --
Author: Gordon Sly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000219763
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 355
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Book Description
Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Song Cycles: Analytical Pathways Toward Performance presents analyses of fourteen song cycles composed after the turn of the twentieth century, with a focus on offering ways into the musical and poetic structure of each cycle to performers, scholars, and students alike. Ranging from familiar works of twentieth-century music by composers such as Schoenberg, Britten, Poulenc, and Shostakovich to lesser-known works by Van Wyk, Sviridov, Wheeler, and Sánchez, this collection of essays captures the diversity of the song cycle repertoire in contemporary classical music. The contributors bring their own analytical perspectives and methods, considering musical structures, the composers' selection of texts, how poetic narratives are expressed, and historical context. Informed by music history, music theory, and performance, Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Song Cycles offers an essential guide into the contemporary art-music song cycle for performers, scholars, students, and anyone seeking to understand this unique genre.
Author: James Dunbar Aldrich-Moodie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music and literature
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
Author: Otto Karolyi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
In crisply written chapters Otto Karolyi introduces the reader to the various features that give modern British music its particular character.
