Mervyn Cooke (ed.) - The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten

The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten

The Cambridge Companion to

BENJAMIN BRITTEN

EDITED BY

Mervyn Cooke

Lecturer in Music, University of Nottingham

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 lRP, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, United Kingdom
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www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521573849

Cambridge University Press 1999

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1999

Typeset in Adobe Minion 10.75/14 pt, in Quarkxpress [SE]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
The Cambridge companion to Benjamin Britten / edited by Mervyn Cooke.

p. cm. (Cambridge companions to music)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0 521 57384 X (hardback) ISBN 0 521 57476 5 (paperback)

1. Britten, Benjamin. I. Cooke, Mervyn, Dr. II. Series.

ML650.C3 1998

786.2dc21 9741860 CIP MN

ISBN-13 978-0-521-57384-9 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-57384-Xhardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-57476-1 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-57476-5 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2005

Contents

Plates

Contributors

Stephen Arthur Allen is currently completing his D.Phil. thesis on Benjamin Britten and Christianity at Somerville College, Oxford. He has given papers on Brittens music at Oxford and Aldeburgh, and as part of a session on music and religious belief at the 1997 international conference of the American Musicological Society. In 1996 he conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House in the premire of Wurrekker, a work for piano and orchestra which he co-composed with Frederick Scott.

Arved Ashby is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the Ohio State University. He completed his Ph.D. at Yale University, and has since pursued interests ranging from Mahler to Robert Ashley, with particular emphasis on modernist aesthetics and the relationship between Schoenberg and Berg. He is currently preparing a study of the relations between concert music and film, writing a book on Bergs early twelve-tone aesthetic and editing a re-evaluation of modernist music.

Mervyn Cooke was Director of Music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, before his appointment as Lecturer in Music at the University of Nottingham in 1993. His publications include studies of Brittens Billy Budd and War Requiem (Cambridge University Press, 1993 and 1996), a monograph on Britten and the Far East (The Boydell Press, 1998) and two volumes on jazz (Thames & Hudson, 1997 and 1998). He is co-editor (with Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed) of the forthcoming third volume of Brittens letters to be published by Faber & Faber. His compositions have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio France and performed at Londons South Bank, and he is also active as a pianist.

Clifford Hindley studied Classics and Philosophy at Oxford, and Theology at Cambridge. Starting with New Testament scholarship (on which he published several articles), in mid-career he moved to the Civil Service and maintained a strong interest in music as an amateur pianist and choral singer. Following retirement, he has made a study of same-sex relationships in Brittens operas, with articles appearing in Music & Letters, Musical Quarterly, Cambridge Opera Journal and History Workshop Journal; he has also published articles on Greek homosexuality.

Paul Kildea was educated at the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford, where he worked closely with Malcolm Gillies and Cyril Ehrlich. He has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and contributed articles and reviews to various journals. He is currently editing Brittens collected writings for Oxford University Press, who are also due to publish his doctoral thesis on the social and economic history of Brittens music; future projects include a volume on Owen Wingrave. He has conducted performances of many Britten works, including the War Requiem, and in 1997 he made his Opera Australia dbut with Janeks The Cunning Little Vixen.

Judith LeGrove read Music at Jesus College, Cambridge, where she wrote a dissertation on Brittens The Burning Fiery Furnace. She is currently Cataloguing Manager at the Britten-Pears Library, Aldeburgh, and contributes to the Aldeburgh Festival programme books, as well as assisting in the preparation of Brittens juvenilia for performance and publication.

Antonia Malloy-Chirgwin read Music at the University of Oxford and completed a Masters degree at the University of Surrey, where she researched the creation of the libretto to Brittens Owen Wingrave. Since then, she has worked extensively on Gloriana, with particular reference to the circumstances of the operas genesis; her account of the works critical reception was published in Paul Banks (ed.), Brittens Gloriana: Essays and Sources (The Boydell Press, 1993). Her other interests include music theatre and the history of orchestration.

Christopher Mark lectures at the University of Surrey. He graduated from the University of Southampton, where he subsequently pursued doctoral research into Brittens music under Peter Evans. A revised version of his thesis, Early Benjamin Britten: A Study of Stylistic and Technical Evolution, was published by Garland in 1995. He has also published articles on Tippett, Bartk and Roger Smalley, and is currently writing a book on Smalley for Harwood Academic Presss Contemporary Music Studies series.

Donald Mitchell was Brittens publisher from 1965 onwards, and has long been internationally recognized as the leading authority on the work of both Britten and Mahler. His edition (with Philip Reed) of the first two volumes of Brittens letters won a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 1992; his other studies of the composer include Benjamin Britten: Pictures from a Life (with John Evans; Faber & Faber, 1978), Britten andAuden in the Thirties (Faber & Faber, 1981) and the Cambridge Opera Handbook on Death in Venice (1987). Several groundbreaking articles on Britten have been reprinted as part of an anthology of his writings, Cradles of the New (Faber & Faber, 1995).

Philip Reed completed his doctoral dissertation on Brittens music for film, theatre and radio, and went on to become Staff Musicologist at the Britten-Pears Library; he is currently Head of Publications at English National Opera. He co-edited (with Donald Mitchell) the first two volumes of Brittens correspondence, and his many other publications include an edition of Peter Pearss travel diaries, the Festschrift On Mahler and Britten for Dr Mitchells 70th birthday, and detailed source studies of Billy Budd, Gloriana, Peter Grimes and the War Requiem.

Eric Roseberry read Music at Durham University with Arthur Hutchings and A. E. F. Dickinson. He subsequently worked as a BBC producer with Hans Keller and later as a music lecturer at Sussex University with Donald Mitchell. He is now a freelance musician and writer specializing in the music of Britten and Shostakovich. His Ph.D. thesis on the latter was published in 1989, and his recent work includes an essay Shostakovich and his late-period recognition of Britten in Cambridge University Presss