Bringing together established authorities and new voices, this book takes off the 'protective arm' around Britten. Benjamin Britten Studies brings together established authorities and new voices to offer a fresh perspective on previous scholarship models and a re-contextualization of previously held beliefs about Britten. Using the mostrecent and innovative historical, musicological, sociological, psychological, and theoretical methodologies, the authors take off the 'protective arm' around Britten and disclose an unprecedented amount of previously unpublishedand disregarded primary source materials. The collection considers difficult questions of identity such as Britten's retreat to America, his re-entry into the British musical scene, and late-life revisions of his American works; scrutinizes the fraught establishing of the English Opera Group contemporaneous with the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts; explores his break with Boosey & Hawkes and inspects international copyright concerns in the Soviet Union' investigates sensitive issues of intimacy and Britten's relationships; and combines closer analysis of Britten's musico-rhythmic, harmonic, and compositional practices with a description of the more overtlypolitical context within which he found himself. Benjamin Britten Studies ends by asking what we can actually know about the composer in a reconsideration of the materials he left behind. All of this coalesces into avolume that not only serves as a model of on-going and future Britten research but which generates a greater understanding of the overall trends within the ever-synthesizing and interdisciplinary musicological field of the twenty-first century. VICKI P. STROEHER is Professor of Music History at Marshall University. JUSTIN VICKERS is Assistant Professor of Voice at Illinois State University. Contributors: Byron Adams, Nicholas Clark, Jenny Doctor, Paul Kildea, Christopher Mark, Thornton Miller, Louis Niebur, Philip Reed, Colleen Renihan, Philip Rupprecht, Kevin Salfen, Vicki P. Stroeher, Justin Vickers, Lucy Walker, Danielle Ward-Griffin, Lloyd Whitesell

At this book's core is a critical edition of letters exchanged over 50 years between Anglo-Irish composer Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) and the Welsh composer Grace Williams (1906-1977). These two innovative and talented women are highly regarded for their music, their professional activities and their roles in British musical life. The edition comprises around 200 letters from 1927 to 1977, none of which have been published before, along with scholarly introductions and contextualizations. Interwoven commentaries, in tandem with carefully constructed appendices, frame the letter texts. Moreover, the commentaries and introductory essays highlight and track the development of important themes and issues that characterize the study of twentieth-century British music today. This edition presents a dialogue, through both sides of a unique correspondence, offering an alternative commentary on musical and cultural developments of this period.

Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz Performance on Screen is the first systematic study of jazz on screen media. Where earlier studies have focused almost entirely on the role and portrayal of jazz in Hollywood film, the present book engages with a plethora of technologies and media from early film and soundies through television to recent developments in digital technologies and online media. Likewise, the authors discuss jazz in the widest sense, ranging from Duke Ellington and Jimmy Dorsey through the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Oscar Peterson, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus to Pat Metheny. Much of this rich and fascinating material has never been studied in depth before, and what emerges most clearly are the manifold connections between the music and the media on which it was and is being recorded. Its long association with film and television has left its trace in jazz, just as online and social media are subtly shaping it now. Vice versa, visual media have always benefited from focusing on music and this significantly affected their development. The book follows these interrelations, showing how jazz was presented and represented on screen and what this tells us about the music, the people who made it and their audiences. The result is a new approach to jazz and the media, which will be required reading for students of both fields.

Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz Performance on Screen is the first systematic study of jazz on screen media. Where earlier studies have focused almost entirely on the role and portrayal of jazz in Hollywood film, the present book engages with a plethora of technologies and media from early film and soundies through television to recent developments in digital technologies and online media. Likewise, the authors discuss jazz in the widest sense, ranging from Duke Ellington and Jimmy Dorsey through the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Oscar Peterson, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus to Pat Metheny. Much of this rich and fascinating material has never been studied in depth before, and what emerges most clearly are the manifold connections between the music and the media on which it was and is being recorded. Its long association with film and television has left its trace in jazz, just as online and social media are subtly shaping it now. Vice versa, visual media have always benefited from focusing on music and this significantly affected their development. The book follows these interrelations, showing how jazz was presented and represented on screen and what this tells us about the music, the people who made it and their audiences. The result is a new approach to jazz and the media, which will be required reading for students of both fields.

Philip BrettOCOs groundbreaking writing on Benjamin Britten altered the course of music scholarship in the later twentieth century. This volume is the first to gather in one collection BrettOCOs searching and provocative work on the great British composer. Some of the early essays opened the door to gay studies in music, while the discussions that Brett initiated reinvigorated the study of BrittenOCOs work and inspired a generation of scholars to imagine the new musicology. Addressing urgent questions of how an artistOCOs sexual, cultural, and personal identity feeds into specific musical texts, Brett examines most of BrittenOCOs operas as well as his role in the British cultural establishment of the mid-twentieth century. With some of the essays appearing here for the first time, this volume develops a complex understanding of BrittenOCOs musical achievement and highlights the many ways that Brett expanded the borders of his field."