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John Bridcut, author of the acclaimed 'Britten's Children', will include significant fresh material which will make the book indispensable for Britten aficionados as well as for those who are discovering the composer's music for the first time. This guide is all about finding a way into Britten's music. An outline of planned chapters: - The Top Ten Britten pieces - Critics' First Impressions - Britten's Life - Britten and Pears - The things they said - The Music (stage works, choral works, songs, chamber music, orchestral works) - The Interpreters of Britten's work - Britten as Performer - The Impresario (English Opera Group and Aldeburgh Festival) - Britten's Homes - Trivial Pursuits
The music of J.S.Bach has a unique power and attraction some 300 years after it was written. From annual performances of the great Passions and BBC Radio 3's hugely successful Bach Christmas, to its use in adverts, films and popular arrangements, the imaginative strength of Bach's music continues to draw listeners to explore its mysteries. This new Pocket Guide looks at all Bach's music, sacred and secular, and explores why he speaks so profoundly to our age about both the spiritual and the sensual in life. Among the features of this easy-to-use book: The Bach Top Ten Bach: The music work by work Performing Bach today Bach: The life year by year What people said about Bach Accessible and easy to use, Nicholas Kenyon provides for the first time an up-to-date survey of all Bach's major works in the light of the latest research, from Masses to Cantatas, Concertos to Suites, and recommends the best CDs and further reading.
Richard Wagner remains, almost 130 years after his death, the most controversial composer in the history of music. Creator of huge and hugely ambitious operas, which have an immense immediate impact, as well as providing food for endless thought and discussion, Wagner has had an influence on many fields outside music. In this lively pocket guide, Michael Tanner gives concise accounts of all his operas - the likes of Parsifal, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde - showing how important it is to grasp the dramatic situations at every point, and indicating some of the key musical features. He also provides an outline of Wagner's astonishing life, and shows that he has often been unfairly criticised and made a scapegoat, especially for political events which took place long after his death. Key features include: - Wagner: his life year by year - Wagner: his music work by work - Things people said about Wagner - Essential Wagner: ten great moments - Wagner on CD and DVD - Wagner bibliography This indispensable Faber Pocket Guide provides a wealth of insights into Wagner and is essential reading for anyone with an interest in both and the man and his music. '[P]robably the best introduction ever written to this most complex of composers.' Simon Heffer, Telegraph
This new edition of leading opera critic Rupert Christiansen's perennially popular Pocket Guide has between extensively revised, and incorporates many more operas from all periods, including recent works by Philip Glass, Mark Anthony Turnage, Thomas Adès and George Benjamin. Whether you are a first-timer at La Boheme or a seasoned Wagnerian, every opera-goer can benefit from a little background information, and this book aims to provide just that. Accessible and easy-to-use, it contains entries for over a hundred works, both familiar and unfamiliar.
With hit TV shows picking the leads in productions of Oliver! and The Sound Of Music, and smash musicals like Hairspray and Wicked all the West End rage, musical theatre is as popular as it's ever been. James Inverne provides an indispensable guide to his top one hundred greatest shows of all time - and ten of the worst. Whether you know your Pal Joey from The Producers, your West Side Story from your Witch Witch, the Faber Pocket Guide To Musicals is packed with entertaining behind-the-scenes stories, essential songlists and comprehensive recording guides. Did you know, for instance, that one of the best recordings of Les Miserables is in Hebrew? Or that the Mel Brooks wasn't the first person to want to make a musical of The Producers? (That claim goes to Eric Idle.) Or the ridiculous story of the huge purpose-built theatre constructed in Holland to house a flop about Grace Kelly? Key features include: - The hundred greatest musicals - Numbers to listen for - Snapshot plot summaries - Ten terrible musicals - Recommended recordings James Inverne has been writing about musical theatre for years and brings copious knowledge, passion for the subject and a sense of fun to a genre that continues to entertain us all. Make the most of the musicals with this vital book.
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.
An essential, refreshingly accessible guide to Greek and Roman drama containing entries for forty plays by all the major dramatists in the classical world - Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, Terence and Seneca. Features include: · Playwright biographies · Synopses and detailed commentary · Advice on the best translations available · A survey of the ancient theatre and its social and political background. Written by John Burgess, freelance director and former Head of New Writing at the National Theatre, this book is an indispensable resource for the theatregoer, student and general reader.
Britten's Children confronts the edgy subject of the composer's obsessional yet strangely innocent relationships with adolescent boys. One of the hallmarks of Benjamin Britten's music is his use of boys' voices, and John Bridcut uses this to create a fresh prism through which to view the composer's life. Interweaving discussion of the music he wrote for and about children with interviews with the boys whom Britten befriended, Bridcut explores the influence of these unique friendships - notably with the late David Hemmings - and how they helped Britten maintain links with his own happy childhood. In a remarkable part of the book Bridcut tells for the first time the full story of Britten's love affair in the 1930s with the 18-year-old German Wulff Scherchen, son of the conductor Hermann Scherchen. As Paul Hoggart of The Times commented, 'this type of love belonged to an emotional landscape that has vanished for ever, and we are the poorer for it'. Since making the film, the author has extended his research to include friendships Britten had with children which have not previously been documented. The documentary Britten's Children won the Royal Philharmonic Society's 2005 Award for Creative Communication: 'this serious and beautiful film explored one aspect of a composer's life in great depth. Avoiding the temptation of sensationalism, Britten's Children was imaginatively researched and both touching and revelatory'.
A thematically organised overview of the musical, social and cultural contexts for the multi-faceted career of this pivotal British composer.
Benjamin Britten was one of the most important and unusual figures in twentieth-century music. This is the perfect introduction to his many wonderful works and his fascinating, controversial life. Benjamin Britten single-handedly transformed the reputation of British classical music. The enormous popular appeal of his great works, such as Peter Grimes (1945) and the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), make him the most successful opera composer of any born in the twentieth century. But his success was not without controversy and pain: he was accused of fleeing Britain to avoid military service, he was widely known to be sexually obsessed with boys and he suffered an astonishing array of illnesses. This short book combines a colourful overview of his life with pithy descriptions of all of his major musical works, providing an intimate portrait of this highly unusual man and a persuasive account of his influences, reputation and importance. Each chapter tackles a key episode and theme in his life, from his first compositions at the age of 5, his early friendship and collaboration with W H Auden and the beginnings of his life-long relationship with the tenor Peter Pears, through to his great musical successes and the establishment of the influential, if tempestuous, Aldeburgh Festival, as well as his failures, such as his coronation opera Gloriana (known as 'Boriana') and being satirised by Dudley Moore in Beyond the Fringe - and ending with frank discussions of his naïve politics, his troubling sexuality and his glorious musical legacy. Published to coincide with his 100th anniversary of his birth, this is the perfect introduction to a towering figure of British culture. Igor Toronyi-Lalic is a critic and curator. He writes regularly on music for, among others, The Times and Sunday Telegraph. He is a founder of theartsdesk.com, the author of What's That Thing? (2012), a report on public art, and co-director of the London Contemporary Music Festival.