Benjamin Britten

Description

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was the greatest English composer of his time, and the first of his generation to enjoy a wide international reputation. With the great success of "Peter Grimes" (1945) he effectively re-invented English opera and was a pioneer of music for film and radio. His monumental "War Requiem" reached a wider audience than any other choral work of the century. He had an international reputation as a pianist and conductor and founded a major arts festival in Aldeburgh, the small East Coast town in which he made his home. For much of his life, however, British critics dismissed his music as merely "clever", and some of his major works had disastrous premieres. In his '20s he considered emigrating to the USA, and lived there for over two years, but homesickness for the country of Suffolk drew him back and inspired some of his finest music. A pacifist and homosexual, he was the subject of much malicious gossip, yet his sexuality and his political and social convictions directly and indirectly inspired much of his art. For the greater part of his creative life he lived with and enjoyed a uniquely creative partnership with the tenor Peter Pears, for whom most of his songs and principal roles in all his operas were written. In this biography, the author creates a portrait of a great artist and discusses the contradictions of his quintessential Englishness and his world stature, his outsider status and his membership of the establishment his artistic adventurousness and his constant regard for musical forms and traditions. This text is part of the 20th-century composers series, examining composers in a biographical context, and offering a comprehensive study of key figures in the creation of 20th-century music. None of the books in the series presume a knowledge of specialized terms or musical notation. Each book in the series features a list of works, a bibliography, and a discography.

Michael Oliver is well known as a writer and broadcaster, having written and compiled numerous programmes for BBC Radio 3 and written regularly for Gramophone and other magazines for over 20 years. He is also the author of Igor Stravinsky in the 20th-Century Composers series.

'Enthusiastically recommended.' (Library Journal) 'Finely balanced and beautifully written.' (Opera) 'Masterfully written. A highly recommended book.' (Scenaria) 'Michael Oliver's Phaidon volume on Britten is one of the best in the series to date. The only regret, says Michael Tanner, is that the book isn't longer.' (Classic CD) 'As a series, Phaidon's 20th Century Composers has brought remarkable variety and a welter of information, both necessary and delightfully trivial. Intended both for the general reader and for the more enthusiatically musical...' (The Scotsman)