Letters from a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten: v. 1 - Rilegato

Britten, Benjamin; Mitchell, Donald

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0520065204 ISBN 13: 9780520065208

Casa editrice: Univ of California Pr, 1991

Riassunto

These remarkable letters, never before published, constitute a comprehensive biography told largely in Britten's own words. Volume 1 accompanies him through prep and English public school and then to London to the Royal College of Music, where the young composer is plunged into metropolitan life and makes influential new friends, among them Auden and Isherwood. This was a time of prodigious musical creativity, a growing awareness of his homosexuality, and the dawning of his political convictions. It was during this time that Britten met Peter Pears, the partner with whom his musical and personal relationship was to last a lifetime. This volume closes in May, 1939, when Britten and Pears depart for the United States.

Volume 2 offers an overview of a crucial period in American and British history, politics, and culture. Britten's experience of exile, his return with Pears to England to face recriminations as a Conscientious Objector and prejudice as a brilliant gay artist, and the triumph of his first major opera, Peter Grimes, are all outlined in letters which are a fascinating mix of the public and private.

These first two volumes of the Selected Letters and Diariesa further two are in preparationmake a fundamental contribution to Britten studies and to twentieth-century cultural history.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Donald Mitchell is the author of innumerable books and articles on Britten and an eminent Mahler scholar as well.Philip Reed is Staff Musicologist at the Britten-Pears Library.

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

"A landmark: these letters and their extensive annotation provide a virtual biography of the most important British composer since Purcell. . . . All those interested in music in the twentieth century must read these volumes, which also provide intriguing snapshots of the recent British past."Peter Stansky, Stanford University

"This is the composer who turned his paranoia as homosexual and pacifist into the classic 20th-century opera,Peter Grimes. . . . Now at last we have some really new material about that personal experience. It turns out to be even more fascinating than one could have imagined."Philip Brett, editor ofCambridge Opera Handbook Peter Grimes

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Univ of California Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0520065204
• ISBN 13: 9780520065208
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 1403
• Redattore: Reed Philip