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This fifth volume of Britten's letters covers a period of intense
activity in his life and works, culminating in his great pacifist
choral masterpiece, War Requiem. The fifth volume of the annotated
selected letters of Benjamin Britten - edited by Philip Reed and
Mervyn Cooke - covers the years 1958-65, during which he wrote two
major operatic works, A Midsummer Night's Dream and the
ground-breaking Curlew River, and his pacifist choral masterpiece,
War Requiem. Other significant compositions from the period include
the orchestral song-cycle Nocturne, the first of the cello pieces
for Rostropovich, and settings of poems by Blake and Pushkin.
Correspondents include friends, fellow artists and collaborators
such as William Plomer (librettist of Curlew River), Edith Sitwell,
E. M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, Robert Graves, the Earl of
Harewood, Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Galina
Vishnevskaya, Dmitri Shostakovich, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,
Barbara Hepworth and Duncan Grant, as well as Britten's partner and
principal interpreter, Peter Pears. The volume charts the peak of
Britten's position as one of the leading figures of the
international musical establishment as composer, conductor and
pianist, and his continuing involvement with the Aldeburgh Festival
and the English Opera Group. The deterioration in Britten's
relationship with Boosey & Hawkes, his publishers since the
mid-1930s, is closely documented, as is the founding, at the
composer's instigation, of the new publishing house of Faber Music
in 1964. Central to the period is the composer's warm friendship
with musicians from the Soviet Union, and Britten and Pears's
visits to Moscow, Leningrad and Armenia are charted in detail.
Published in association with The Britten-Pears Foundation.
The fourth volume of this acclaimed edition of Britten's letters
covers the composition of three key works and the world trip that
was to radically inform the composer's style thereafter. One of the
most illuminating biographical projects in recent years. PETER
ACKROYD The fourth volume of the annotated selected letters of
Benjamin Britten covers the years 1952-57, during which he wrote
three major worksfor the stage - the Coronation opera Gloriana, the
chamber opera The Turn of the Screw, and the full-length ballet The
Prince of the Pagodas - as well as important vocal works such as
Canticles II and III andthe Hardy song-cycle Winter Words.
Correspondents include librettists William Plomer (Gloriana) and
Myfanwy Piper (The Turn of the Screw), and friends and
collaborators such as Edith Sitwell, E. M. Forster, Basil Coleman,
Imogen Holst, Francis Poulenc, Lennox Berkeley, the Earl of
Harewood and Britten's partner and principal interpreter, Peter
Pears. The volume charts Britten's growing stature as a major
figure of the Europeanmusical establishment as composer, conductor
and pianist, and his continuing involvement with the Aldeburgh
Festival, the English Opera Group, and Covent Garden. Central to
the period is the world trip undertaken by Britten and Pears and
the first-hand encounter with the music and cultures of Bali and
Japan that were radically to inform Britten's compositional
techniques from Pagodas onwards. The comprehensive and scholarly
annotations vividly evoke a key period in twentieth-century musical
and cultural history, and offer a wide range of detailed
information fascinating for both the Britten specialist and the
general reader. Published in association with The Britten-Pears
Foundation.
The third volume of the annotated selected letters of composer
Benjamin Britten covers the years 1946-51, during which he wrote
many of his best-known works, founded and developed the English
Opera Group and the Aldeburgh Festival, and toured widely in Europe
and the United States as a pianist and conductor. Correspondents
include librettists Ronald Duncan (The Rape of Lucretia), Eric
Crozier (Albert Herring, Saint Nicolas, The Little Sweep) and E. M.
Forster (Billy Budd); conductor Ernest Ansermet and composer Lennox
Berkeley; publishers Ralph Hawkes and Erwin Stein of Boosey &
Hawkes; and the celebrated tenor Peter Pears, Britten's partner.
Among friends in the United States are Christopher Isherwood,
Elizabeth Mayer and Aaron Copland, and there is a significant
meeting with Igor Stravinsky. This often startling and innovative
period is vividly evoked by the comprehensive and scholarly
annotations, which offer a wide range of detailed information
fascinating for both the Britten specialist and the general reader.
Donald Mitchell contributes a challenging introduction exploring
the interaction of life and work in Britten's creativity, and an
essay examining for the first time, through their correspondence,
the complex relationship between the composer and the writer Edward
Sackville-West.
The composer's final decade sees a new outpouring of creativity.
The sixth and final volume of the annotated selected letters of
Benjamin Britten, edited by Philip Reed and Mervyn Cooke, covers
the composer's last decade. The genesis, composition and premieres
of major stage works such as Owen Wingrave, commissioned by BBC
Television, and Death in Venice are fully documented, as are the
church parables, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son.
Important concert works from this period include the powerful
Brecht setting, Children's Crusade, the Third Cello Suite (for
Rostropovich), Canticles IV and V (both settings of poetry by T. S.
Eliot), Phaedra (for Janet Baker) and the Third String Quartet,
with its haunting echoes of Death in Venice. As in previous
volumes, Britten's letters to his life partner and principal
interpreter, the tenor Peter Pears, remain central. Other
significant correspondents include theQueen and Queen Mother;
librettists William Plomer and Myfanwy Piper; artistic
collaborators Frederick Ashton, Colin Graham and John Piper;
musicians Janet Baker, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Mstislav
Rostropovich; and composers Oliver Knussen, Dmitri Shostakovich and
William Walton. The volume also traces the conversion of Snape
Maltings into the Aldeburgh Festival's principal concert venue, its
destruction by fire on the opening night of the 1969 Festival and
its miraculous rebuilding in time for the following year's
Festival, as well as major concert tours by Britten and Pears to
New York, Canada, South America, Moscow and Leningrad, Australia,
and New Zealand. Close attention is paid to Britten's final years,
when his failed heart surgery left him a near invalid. Published in
association with The Britten-Pears Foundation.
Critical essays and studies reflecting the latest thinking on two
major figures in 20c music. In this Festschrift for Donald
Mitchell, the foremost authority on the life and works of Gustav
Mahler and Benjamin Britten, distinguished composers, scholars,
colleagues and friends from around the world have written on
aspects of these two composers closest to Mitchell's heart,
producing a volume which not only reflects some of the latest
thinking on this pair of remarkable figures in the music of our
century, but which also pays full tribute to the impact of
Mitchell's own work on these composers over the last fifty years.
The volume includes the fullest bibliography of Mitchell's writings
yet compiled.
PETER PEARS's reputation as an outstanding and distinctive tenor is
grounded in his interpretations of Benjamin Britten's works; their
partnership of thirty years significantly shaped and defined
musical developments not only in England but on a broader plane.
Throughout their busy professional lives they travelled
extensively, on concert tours and on holiday, finding fresh
stimulus in change. Pear's twelve travel diaries, brought together
in this volume, record much of that travel and provide valuable
contextual material on the musical development of both Pears and
Britten.
The first diary dates from 1936, the year before his friendship
with Britten began, when he went on tour to North America with the
New English Singers. Other diaries record the five-month tour to
the Far East and the important encounters (especially for Britten)
with the gamelan music of Bali and the Japanese Noh theatre; visits
to Russia as guests of Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina
Vishnevskaya, where they met significant figures from Russian
musical life; and attendance at the Ansbach Bach Festival when
Pears was at the height of his career. Also recorded are holidays
in the Caribbean and Italy, a concert tour through the north of
England, and accounts of the rehearsals and performances of the New
York premieres of Billy Budd and Death in Venice.
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Modern Trilogy (Paperback)
James Dodman Nobel; Illustrated by Philip Reed
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R538
Discovery Miles 5 380
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville's nautical allegory, is one of Britten's most challenging operas. This comprehensive guide considers the work from both literary and musical viewpoints. Melville's novella is discussed, as is the interpretation given to the novella by the librettists E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier. A detailed synopsis guides the reader through the musical and dramatic action of the opera and in a chapter devoted to the music, Britten's distinctive technique of tonal symbolism is analyzed to demonstrate the effectiveness of his musical response to the dramatic suggestions of Melville's story. The most important critical writings on Billy Budd are represented by an expanded version of Donald Mitchell's 1979 notebook on the opera. A final chapter charts the opera's stage history and fluctuating critical reception.
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