Benjamin Britten in Context

Benjamin Britten, pianist, conductor, educator, composer of  a wide range of music from large-scale operas and choral works to string quartets and songs, is acknowledged as a pivotal figure in mid-twentieth-century Britain. This volume explores the contexts for his multi-faceted career and his engagement with his contemporaries in music, art, literature, and film, British musical institutions, royal and governmental entities, and the church, as well as his ground-breaking projects, philosophical and ideological tenets. The book is thematically structured in five parts: Britten's relationships with Peter Pears, his close friends, mentors, and colleagues; musical life in Britain; his interactions with previous and contemporary generations of composers; his professional work with choreographers, librettists, stage designers, and directors; and his socio-cultural, religious, and political environment. The chapters shed light on the many opportunities and challenges of post-war British musical life that shaped Britten's creative output.

Vicki P. Stroeher is Professor of Music at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. She is co-editor of My Beloved Man: The Letters of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears (with Jude Brimmer and Nicholas Clark, 2016) which earned the 2017 C. B. Oldman Award and Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art (with Justin Vickers, 2017). She has also contributed to Literary Britten. Her current monograph project investigates Britten's interpretation of poetry in his songs and song cycles within a narratological framework.

Justin Vickers is Professor of Music at Illinois State University. As a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom, he is completing his first monograph The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts: A History of the Britten and Pears Era, 1948–1986, (forthcoming). He is co-editor of Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art (with Vicki P. Stroeher, 2017). He has contributed to The Sea in the British Musical Imagination (2016) and Literary Britten: Words and Music in Benjamin Britten's Vocal Works (2019). His additional research focuses on Britten's song and the creative process, Peter Pears, and the English Opera Group, among other mid-century British topics.