Items related to Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music
Synopsis
Benjamin Britten was the greatest English composer of the twentieth century and one of the outstanding musicians of his age. Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in 1913, Britten was the youngest child of a dentist father and amateur musician mother. After studying at the Royal College of Music, he became a vital part of London's creative and intellectual life during the 1930s, collaborating with W. H. Auden and meeting his lifelong partner, the tenor Peter Pears. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Britten and Pears were already in America, earning a precarious living as freelance musicians before re-crossing the Atlantic by ship in the perilous days of 1942. But the east coast of England was where Britten, as he himself said, belonged: this was where he returned to write his most famous opera, Peter Grimes, and - with Pears and Eric Crozier - to found the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948. In the years that followed, his worldwide reputation grew steadily, helped by a busy schedule of international tours and, for many, crowned by the extraordinary success of his War Requiem. Meanwhile, his festival went from strength to strength, its progress symbolised by the opening of Snape Maltings Concert Hall in 1967. Britten was a mass of paradoxes: a solitary, introspective thinker who came to ebullient life in the company of young people, for whom he composed some of his most memorable works; a man of the political left who was on the friendliest terms with members of the royal family; a composer inspired by some of the twentieth century's deepest preoccupations who combined innovation with a profound understanding of musical tradition. Devoted to his friends, proteges and fellow musicians, he was, above all, someone who lived for music. Neil Powell's book is the landmark biography for Britten's centenary year: a subtle and moving portrait of a brilliant, complex and ultimately loveable man.
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Product Description
This spellbinding centenary biography by Neil Powell looks at the music, the life, and the legacy of the greatest British composer of the twentieth century
Benjamin Britten was born on November 22, 1913, in the East Suffolk town of Lowestoft. Displaying a passion and proficiency for music at an early age, to the delight of his mother, Edith, a talented amateur musician herself, he began composing music when he was only five years old. After studying at the Royal College of Music, Britten went on to write documentary scores for the General Post Office Film Unit, where he met and collaborated with the poet W. H. Auden.
Of more lasting importance was Britten’s introduction in 1937 to the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become the inspirational center of his emotional and musical life. Their partnership lasted nearly four decades, during a dangerous time when homosexuality was illegal in England. Conscientious objectors, Britten and Pears followed Auden to America before the war began in 1939. While there, they joined the extraordinary Brooklyn ménage of George Davis, Louis MacNeice, and Paul Bowles.
Eventually intense homesickness, provoked in part by George Crabbe’s poem “Peter Grimes,” drove the pair home to East Anglia in 1942 and gave Britten the inspiration for his finest opera. Throughout his career, Britten did not want modern music to be just for “the cultured few” and instead always composed his music to be “listenable-to.” The shared quotidian lives of Britten and Pears unfold in this intimate biography and the story of two men who created a truly remarkable legacy.
About the Author
Neil Powell is a poet and biographer who has written extensively on literature and music. His previous books include Roy Fuller: Writer and Society (1995), The Language of Jazz (1997), George Crabbe: An English Life (2004) and Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations (2008), as well as seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Proof of Identity (2012). He lives in Suffolk.
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- PublisherSt. Martin's Griffin
- Publication date2099
- ISBN 10 1250048753
- ISBN 13 9781250048752
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages544
- Rating
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