Britten: War Requiem

Britten: War Requiem PDF

Author: Mervyn Cooke

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-11-07

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780521446334

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Widely regarded as one of the greatest choral works of the twentieth century, Britten's War Requiem was first performed at the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962. It provocatively juxtaposes the vivid anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass in a passionate outcry against man's inhumanity to man. This handbook explores the background to Britten's use of the Owen texts, charting the development of the composer's lifelong pacifist beliefs and (in a chapter contributed by Philip Reed of the Britten-Pears Library, Aldeburgh) detailing the process of composition from hitherto unpublished correspondence and manuscript sources. The musical structure is investigated, and the work's compositional idiom related to Britten's output as a whole. A concluding chapter surveys the fluctuating critical responses to the score, and includes discussion of the composer's legendary 1963 recording and Derek Jarman's controversial interpretation on film.

Orchestral Song Cycles

Orchestral Song Cycles PDF

Author: Charles Villiers Stanford

Publisher: A-R Editions, Inc.

Published: 2019-01-31

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1987200268

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Charles Villiers Stanford wrote two cycles of songs for baritone with orchestra and chorus, setting nautical verses by the popular poet Henry Newbolt. From its premiere at the Leeds Musical Festival in October 1904, Songs of the Sea was a great success; Songs of the Fleet followed in 1910 and was transparently modeled on it (even quoting from the earlier work). Both works became very popular among amateur choral societies. Songs of the Sea was published in full score a year after its composition; it now appears in a critical edition for the first time in the present volume, which also includes the first publication of the orchestral version of Songs of the Fleet. Both works demonstrate Stanford’s mastery of orchestral technique and sureness of touch. Newbolt’s texts alternate between heroic and sentimental moods; Stanford responded with music that is dramatic and atmospheric—indeed, with some of the most remarkable textures of his whole oeuvre.

Britten's Children

Britten's Children PDF

Author: John Bridcut

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2011-04-21

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0571260926

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Britten's Children confronts the edgy subject of the composer's obsessional yet strangely innocent relationships with adolescent boys. One of the hallmarks of Benjamin Britten's music is his use of boys' voices, and John Bridcut uses this to create a fresh prism through which to view the composer's life. Interweaving discussion of the music he wrote for and about children with interviews with the boys whom Britten befriended, Bridcut explores the influence of these unique friendships - notably with the late David Hemmings - and how they helped Britten maintain links with his own happy childhood. In a remarkable part of the book Bridcut tells for the first time the full story of Britten's love affair in the 1930s with the 18-year-old German Wulff Scherchen, son of the conductor Hermann Scherchen. As Paul Hoggart of The Times commented, 'this type of love belonged to an emotional landscape that has vanished for ever, and we are the poorer for it'. Since making the film, the author has extended his research to include friendships Britten had with children which have not previously been documented. The documentary Britten's Children won the Royal Philharmonic Society's 2005 Award for Creative Communication: 'this serious and beautiful film explored one aspect of a composer's life in great depth. Avoiding the temptation of sensationalism, Britten's Children was imaginatively researched and both touching and revelatory'.

Britten's Unquiet Pasts

Britten's Unquiet Pasts PDF

Author: Heather Wiebe

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-10-04

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0521194679

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Heather Wiebe's book looks to the music of Benjamin Britten to elucidate a British postwar vision of cultural renewal.

Britten's Musical Language

Britten's Musical Language PDF

Author: Philip Rupprecht

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-11-23

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1139441280

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Blending insights from linguistic and social theories of speech, ritual and narrative with music-analytic and historical criticism, Britten's Musical Language offers interesting perspectives on the composer's fusion of verbal and musical utterance in opera and song and provides close interpretative studies of the major scores.

Music's Monisms

Music's Monisms PDF

Author: Daniel Albright

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-11-05

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 022679122X

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"The late Daniel Albright was one of the preeminent scholars of musical and literary modernism, leaving behind a rich body of work before his untimely passing. In the essays contained in Music's Monisms, he shows how musical phenomena, like literary ones, can be fruitfully investigated through the lens of monism, the philosophical belief that things that appear to be two are actually one. Albright shows how, in music, despite its many binaries-diatonic vs. chromatic, staccato vs. legato, major vs. minor, tonal vs. atonal-there is always a larger system at work that aims to reconcile all tension and resolve all conflict. Albright identifies a "radical monism" in the work of modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and musical works by Wagner, Debussy, Britten, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, and also delves into figures such as Maeterlinck, Rimbaud, and Yeats along the way. Through a series of close readings of musical and literary works, Albright advances powerful philosophical arguments that not only shed light on these specific figures but also aesthetic experience in general"--

Maggi Hambling: War Requiem

Maggi Hambling: War Requiem PDF

Author: Maggi Hambling

Publisher: Unicorn Publishing Group

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781910065228

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Maggi Hambling is one of Britain's most celebrated and controversial contemporary artists. Her best-known works are her public sculpture of Oscar Wilde in London and The Scallop, celebrating composer Benjamin Britten, on the beach at Aldeburgh. But her paintings are just as remarkable, stirring emotions through broad, intense brush strokes and an unflinchingly direct engagement with her subject matter. Possessing a candor and emotiveness that is at odds with much contemporary art, Hambling's paintings are distinct and unforgettable. War Requiem for the first time brings together Hambling's many paintings of battlefields and the victims of war. Though fiercely contemporary, the paintings nonetheless feel timeless and speak to conflicts everywhere--from the most ancient to those in the here and now. Published to accompany an exhibit of Hambling's work last summer at SNAP: Art at the Aldeburgh Festival, War Requiem stands as a bold testament to the anguish and absurdity of war. Essays by noted art historian James Cahill draw upon extensive interviews with the artist and help to place War Requiem within the larger context of Hambling's oeuvre. As the centennial of World War I brings inevitable public reflection about war and history, War Requiem offers a stark reminder of the costs of conflict.

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