For centuries, the sea and those who sail upon it have inspired the imaginations of British musicians. Generations of British artists have viewed the ocean as a metaphor for the mutable human condition - by turns calm and reflective, tempestuous and destructive - and have been influenced as much by its physical presence as by its musical potential. But just as geographical perspectives and attitudes on seascapes have evolved over time, so too have culturalassumptions about their meaning an...

Childhood and the Operatic Imaginary since 1900 addresses a stark reality: Opera Studies has neglected its children. Opera scholarship has been complicit in othering children and childhoods, disregarding repertoire for, by, and about children as well as its creators. This volume tilts Opera Studies off its adult-centric axis by focusing on children as characters, creators, performers, and audiences. The gender biases that have plagued children's literature and its related study as...

Elizabeth Maconchy was one of the most prominent and successful composers of the twentieth century, a champion of contemporary music who composed chamber operas, choral music, orchestral works, a range of compositions and operas for children, and a highly-regarded series of string quartets. This collection explores her life and work, her Irishness and her formative years at the Royal College of Music. It examines her intersections with musical and cultural movements, and the persistent and...

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, philosop...

Published to mark the beginning of the Britten centenary year in 2013, Paul Kildea's Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century is the definitive biography of Britain's greatest modern composer.In the eyes of many, Benjamin Britten was our finest composer since Purcell (a figure who often inspired him) three hundred years earlier. He broke decisively with the romantic, nationalist school of figures such as Parry, Elgar and Vaughan Williams and recre...

Ideas in Profile SeriesIs music a science or an art? It's both, as Andrew Gant reveals in this lively and accessible account of what music is and what it's for. Music has been central to life since the dawn of humankind and is intimately bound up with the origins of language.Andrew Gant introduces us to its long history and its many genres and manifestations. He explains how composers compose, players play and singers sing. He looks at how musical styles de...

Volume One of these remarkable letters and diaries opens with a letter from Britten aged nine to his formidable mother, Edith. Music is already at the centre of his life, and it accompanies him through prep and public school and then to London to the Royal College of Music, where the phenomenally gifted but inexperienced young composer is plunged into metropolitan life and makes influential new friends, among them W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. This was a time of prodigious musical...

Robert Simpson (1921-1997) is widely regarded as the most important British composer in the generation following Benjamin Britten. He wrote 11 symphonies, 15 string quartets, much other chamber music and works for brass band. He also wrote definitive studies of Bruckner and Nielsen. A committed socialist and pacifist, Simpson worked as a volunteer on a mobile surgical unit during the London blitz. Brought up in the Salvation Army, he later rejected religion, and never tried to ingratiate h...

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating, important, and influential figures in the history of British music. He rose from humble beginnings and achieved fame with music that to this day is beloved by audiences in England, and his work has secured an enduring legacy worldwide. Leading scholars examine the composer's life in Edward Elgar and His World, presenting a comprehensive portrait of both the man and the age in which he lived.Elgar's achiev...

2013 marks the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten. Here is an outstanding collection of essays to mark the event.Britten's Century considers various aspects of Britten's life and work. The book is written by biographers, performers and music critics. Here is a wealth of subject matter - Britten's operatic output, his orchestral works, his contribution to the revival of English song.Biographically, this book moves on beyond the relationship ...

The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten is a comprehensive guide to the composer's work, aimed both at the non-specialist and music student. It sheds light on both the composer's stylistic and personal development, offering new interpretations of his operatic works and discussing his characteristic working methods. Topics treated here in detail for the first time include Britten's work in the cinema in the 1930s, his lifelong pacifism and his strong interest in the music of the Far Eas...

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...