Benjamin Britten; Author: Oliver, Michael; Paperback

Author: Oliver, Michael
20th Century Composers; Paperback; 100 B&w Illustrations, Bibliography
240 pages
Published: October 1996
Phaidon Press Ltd
ISBN: 0714832774

Benjamin Britten (1913 -- 76) was the greatest English composer of his time, and the first of his generation to enjoy a wide international reputation. With the great success of Peter Grimes(1945) he effectively reinvented English opera and was a pioneer of music for film and radio. For much of his life, however, British critics dismissed his music as merely 'clever'. Nor was his private life free from malicious gossip, yet his sexuality and his political and social convictions directly or indirectly inspired much of his art. In this masterly biography the author creates a portrait of a great artist and discusses the contradictions of his quintessential Englishness and his world stature, his outsider status and his membership of the establishment, his artistic adventurousness andThis biography of Benjamin Britten places his work in the context of his times. The text is supplemented by reference material, with a list of works, bibliography and discography, and discusses his artistic inspirations, critical responses to his work, his sexuality, and political convictions.