Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
7,771
result(s) for
"Britten, Benjamin"
Sort by:
For the Love of Song: Tracing the Scholarship of Graham Johnson
Graham Johnson is one of the most highly regarded art song specialists in the world, internationally known for his performances as well as for his innovative recital programming. His breadth of experience in the repertoire serves as a unique model for current and future generations of artists. In May 2024, the authors interviewed Johnson about his scholarship, and clear themes emerged throughout the conversation: the importance of curiosity and constant education, as well as the value and power of knowledge in the work of pianists, coaches, and performers.
Journal Article
The Public-Educational Musings of Benjamin Britten: Toward A Post-Critical Love For Classical Music
In this paper we discuss the musical work of classical composer Benjamin Britten as a lasting legacy for public music education. Our starting point is the contemporary urgency to rethink both public music education in general, and the public-educational significance of Western classical music in particular, in the face of the dual threats posed by anti-educational tendencies of “functionalization” and “hobbyfication.” Relating this situation to concerns already voiced by Britten in his time, we consider in what ways aspects of Britten’s musical work can be shown to reveal a highly original, post-critical answer to these threats. While his pedagogical musings remain riddled with ambiguities, which readily invite critical deconstruction, our paper argues for the more affirmative option of reconceptualizing these ambiguities as constitutive tensions of a public-educational love for (classical) music. To gauge the practical implications of such a post-critical music-educational love, we analyze the concrete case of the Aldeburgh Festival , perhaps Britten’s most full-fledged effort to reclaim music as a public affair. Thinking about this case, we reflect on how Britten’s legacy could lastingly impinge on the publicness of Western classical music, as well as on ongoing and future practices of public music education in general.
Journal Article
Essays on Benjamin Britten from a Centenary Symposium
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.
eBook
Britten
Benjamin Britten was one of the outstanding British composers of the 20th century. He shot to international fame with his operas, performed by how own English Opera Group, and a series of extraordinary instrumental works. Matthews brings to this biography his special insight as a fellow composer, former assistant, and life-long friend of Britten to produce a uniquely personal, sensitive, and authoritative account.
Book
After Mahler
The music of Gustav Mahler repeatedly engages with Romantic notions of redemption. This is expressed in a range of gestures and procedures, shifting between affirmative fulfilment and pessimistic negation. In this groundbreaking study, Stephen Downes explores the relationship of this aspect of Mahler's music to the output of Benjamin Britten, Kurt Weill and Hans Werner Henze. Their initial admiration was notably dissonant with the prevailing Zeitgeist – Britten in 1930s England, Weill in 1920s Germany and Henze in 1950s Germany and Italy. Downes argues that Mahler's music struck a profound chord with them because of the powerful manner in which it raises and intensifies dystopian and utopian complexes and probes the question of fulfilment or redemption, an ambition manifest in ambiguous tonal, temporal and formal processes. Comparisons of the ways in which this topic is evoked facilitate new interpretative insights into the music of these four major composers.
eBook
My beloved man : the letters of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears
It's a life of the two of us.' This volume comprises the complete surviving correspondence between Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. The 365 letters written throughout their 39-year relationship are here brought together and published, as Pears intended, for the first time. While the correspondence provides valuable evidence of the development of Britten's works, more significant is the insight into his relationship with Pears and their day-to-day life together. Entertaining to read, domestic and intimate, the letters provide glimpses of cultural and artistic life in the twentieth century, including pacifism and conscientious objection, critical assessments of music and other artists, transport and communications development in the twentieth century, the 'Aldeburgh corpses', art collecting, gossip, everyday life in an English country house, the development of the Aldeburgh Festival, performance practice in early music, looking after dachshunds, travel, and a host of other topics. Above all, when read together, Britten and Pears's letters allow the clearest possible look 'behind the scenes' of one of the most productive creative partnerships of the twentieth century.
Book
Osian Ellis on Benjamin Britten's Suite for Harp
In 1969, Britten invited Ellis to arrange and introduce a program at the Aldeburgh Festival to be called Artist's Choice, and, with a twinkle in his eye, he added: \"You may commission a new work for the harp from any composer whom you care to mention.\" [...]the Suite for Harp, Britten's single work for solo harp, dedicated to Osian Ellis, was born. Following a heart operation in 1973, Britten could no longer accompany the tenor Peter Pears in their joint recitals, a partnership which had lasted for thirty-five years.
Journal Article