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

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.

An essay collection which examines Britten's juvenilia, influences such as Shostakovich and Verdi, his opera Owen Wingrave and a libretto written by Australian novelist Patrick White with the hope of a future collaboration.

A thematically organised overview of the musical, social and cultural contexts for the multi-faceted career of this pivotal British composer.

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.

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.

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.

The contemporary music scene thus embodies a uniquely broad spectrum of activity, which has grown and changed down to the present hour. With new talents emerging and different technologies developing as we move further into the 21st century, no one can predict what paths music will take next. All we can be certain of is that the inspiration and originality that make music live will continue to bring awe, delight, fascination, and beauty to the people who listen to it. This book cover modernist and postmodern concert music worldwide from the years 1888 to 2018. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on the most important composers, musicians, methods, styles, and media in modernist and postmodern classical music worldwide, from 1888 to 2018. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about modern and contemporary classical music.

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.

Seminal lectures on music education since the 1990s. There is no question that music education is in crisis today. The place of music in the national curriculum is controversial; there have been cuts in the provision of individual lessons; and there have been severe reductions in government funding, with more planned. This book, containing the first five Bernarr Rainbow Lectures, makes an important and timely contribution to the debate on music education. Baroness Warnock brings the perspective of a distinguished philosopher to bear on issues about the nature of music and its study; Lord Moser urges us to maintain and expand what has been achieved since World War II; the late Professor John Paynter, responsible for the 1960s surge in creative approaches to music teaching, presents his case in two contributions; John Stephens discusses structures for music teaching and then, in a second contribution, brings everything up to date; and Professor Gavin Henderson traces his own colourful career and supports music for all ages. Also included is the 2005 Royal Philharmonic Society by the Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies; an assessment from Bernarr Rainbow himself, written late in his life; an indictment from Wilfrid Mellers; and two reviews of Bernarr Rainbow on Music: Memoirs and Selected Writings, showing the continuing importance of his work fifteen years after his death. This book is part of the series Classic Texts in Music Education, edited by Professor Peter Dickinson, and supported by the Bernarr Rainbow Trust. Peter Dickinson is a British composer, writer and pianist and authorand editor of books on Lennox Berkeley, Copland, Cage, Barber and Berners.