Letters from a Life

Letters from a Life PDF

Author: Donald Mitchell

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 640

ISBN-13: 9780571164059

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This two-volume set of letters sheds new light on the composer Benjamin Britten's personal and musical life. Volume One, 1923-39 opens with a letter from Britten, aged ten, to his mother Edith. This first volume includes the period he spent at the Royal College of Music where he meets influential new friends, among them W.H.Auden and Christopher Isherwood. It was during this period that Britten met Peter Pears, the partner with whom his musical and personal relationship was to last a lifetime. Volume one ends in May 1939 when Britten sets out, accompanied by Pears, for North America.

Letters from a Life Volume 3 (1946-1951)

Letters from a Life Volume 3 (1946-1951) PDF

Author: Benjamin Britten

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2011-07-07

Total Pages: 781

ISBN-13: 0571279937

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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.

Letters from a Life Volume 3 (1946-1951)

Letters from a Life Volume 3 (1946-1951) PDF

Author: Benjamin Britten

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2012-08

Total Pages: 784

ISBN-13: 9780571299300

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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.

Performing History

Performing History PDF

Author: Nancy November

Publisher: Academic Studies PRess

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1644694468

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The fifteen essays of Performing History glimpse the diverse ways music historians “do” history, and the diverse ways in which music histories matter. This book’s chapters are structured into six key areas: historically informed performance; ethnomusicological perspectives; particular musical works that “tell,” “enact,” or “perform” war histories; operatic works that works that “tell,” “enact,” or “perform” power or enlightenment; musical works that deploy the body and a broad range of senses to convey histories; and histories involving popular music and performance. Diverse lines of evidence and manifold methodologies are represented here, ranging from traditional historical archival research to interviewing, performing, and composing. The modes of analyzing music and its associated texts represented here are as various as the kinds of evidence explored, including, for example, reading historical accounts against other contextual backdrops, and reading “between the lines” to access other voices than those provided by mainstream interpretation or traditional musicology.

The End of the Church?

The End of the Church? PDF

Author: Hannah Marije Altorf

Publisher: Sacristy Press

Published: 2022-12-01

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1789592526

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These 14 essays by scholars who have worked with David Jasper in both church and academy develop original discussions of themes emerging from his writings on literature, theology and hermeneutics. The arts, institutions, literature and liturgy are among the subject areas they cover.

Britten's Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs

Britten's Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs PDF

Author: Gordon Cameron Sly

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2023-04-18

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1783277718

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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.

Notes for Violists

Notes for Violists PDF

Author: David M. Bynog

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-11-19

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0190916133

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Notes for Violists: A Guide to the Repertoire offers historical and analytical information about thirty-five of the best-known pieces for the instrument, making it an essential resource for professional, amateur, and student violists alike. With engaging prose supported by fact-filled analytical charts, the book offers rich biographical information and insightful analyses that help violists gain a more complete understanding of pieces like Béla Bartók's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, Rebecca Clarke's Sonata for Viola and Piano, Robert Schumann's Märchenbilder for Viola and Piano, op. 113, Carl Stamitz's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra in D Major, Igor Stravinsky's Élégie for Viola or Violin Unaccompanied, and thirty other masterpieces. This comprehensive guide to key pieces from the viola repertoire from the eighteenth through the twentieth century covers concertos, chamber pieces, and works for solo viola by a wide range of composers, including Bach, Telemann, Mozart, Hoffmeister, Walton, and Hindemith. Author David M. Bynog not only offers clear structural analyses of these compositions but also situates them in their historical contexts as he highlights crucial biographical information on composers and explores the circumstances of the development and performance of each work. By connecting performance studies with scholarship, this indispensable handbook for students and professionals allows readers to gain a more complete picture of each work and encourages them to approach other compositions in a similarly analytical manner.

Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain

Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain PDF

Author: Peter Webster

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1137369108

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This book is the first full-length treatment of Walter Hussey's work as a patron between 1943 and 1978, first for the Anglican parish church of St Matthew in Northampton, and then at Chichester Cathedral. He was responsible for the most significant sequence of works of art commissioned for the British churches in the twentieth century. They included music by Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein and William Walton, visual art by Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Marc Chagall, and poetry by W. H. Auden. Placing Hussey in theological context and in a period of rapid cultural change, it explores the making and reception of the commissions, and the longer-term influence of his work, still felt today. As well as contributing to the religious and cultural history of Britain, and of Anglo-Catholicism and the cathedrals in particular, the book will be of interest to all those concerned with the relationship between theology and the arts, and to historians of music and the visual arts.