Academic literature on the topic 'Peter Grimes (Britten, Benjamin)'

Al escuchar una grabación de música clásica no solemos reparar en la labor del productor y nos limitamos a considerar tan sólo al compositor y al intérprete. Sin embargo, la importancia e influencia de los productores ha sido determinante durante toda la historia de la grabación musical; su labor evolucionó a lo largo del segundo tercio del siglo XX desde la concepción de la grabación como fotografía de una interpretación en los años treinta hasta su consideración como objeto artístico en los sesenta, pasando por la visión idealista del concierto en los cuarenta y cincuenta. Uno de los productores más importantes y novedosos de los años cincuenta y sesenta fue John Culshaw (1924-1980) que consideró la grabación como otro texto, además de la partitura, a la hora de documentar la obra musical; un texto mucho más rico que los signos de notación al documentar una obra musical en su manifestación sonora. Culshaw diseñó todo un sistema de producción musical que puso en práctica en su mítica grabación del Anillo de Wagner entre 1958 y 1965 donde separó la grabación del planteamiento idealista del concierto en vivo o pretendió paliar la pérdida de lo visual a través de medios técnicos y acústicos conocidos como “Sonicstage”. En este artículo me centraré en su colaboración con el compositor Benjamin Britten (1913- 1976), de la que nacieron registros fonográficos clásicos para Decca ("War Requiem" en 1963) y audiovisuales para la BBC ("Peter Grimes" en 1969), en los que el compositor inglés dirigía sus obras y que le llevarían a escribir una ópera especialmente pensaba para su emisión televisiva ("Owen Wingrave" en 1970).

Opera performances, located at the intersection of literature, theater music and the visual arts, tend to fuse specificities of several art forms. This essay reflects on the libretto and score of the chamber opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960), by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), based on Shakespeare’s homonymous text (1595-1596), and analyses the 1981 operatic adaptation at Glyndebourne, directed by the renowned theatre director and régisseur Peter Hall (1930-2017). The intermedial dialogues among Shakespeare, Britten and Hall will be investigated in the light of theoretical perspectives by Linda and Michael Hutcheon, Claus Clüver, Jorge Coli, Freda Chapple and others.***Sonho de uma noite de verão: reflexões sobre a ópera de câmara de Benjamin Britten***Situada na interface da literatura, teatro, música e artes visuais, a performance operística é caracterizada pela fusão de especificidades de diversas formas de arte. Este ensaio reflete sobre o libreto e a partitura de Sonho de uma noite de verão (1960), ópera de câmara de Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), composta a partir do texto homônimo (1595-1596) de Shakespeare, e analisa a adaptação operística de 1981 apresentada em Glyndebourne, dirigida pelo renomado diretor de teatro e régisseur Peter Hall (1930-2017). Os diálogos intermidiáticos entre Shakespeare, Britten e Hall serão investigados à luz de considerações teóricas de Linda e Michael Hutcheon, Claus Clüver, Jorge Coli, Freda Chapple e outros.Palavras-chave: Shakespeare; Benjamin Britten; Peter Hall; Adaptação;Intermidialidade

AbstractJournalists and scholars have long observed how Aldeburgh seems to function as a larger stage for Benjamin Britten’s village-themed operas. Not only is it the explicit setting forPeter Grimes, but it also serves as the site for the annual Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts, founded by Britten in 1948. This article examines how the Festival served as a parallel construction of the village life seen in Britten’s early operas, particularlyAlbert Herring(1947) andLittle Sweep(1949). Analysing materials from the initial years of the Festival – including programme books and accounts of exhibitions and performances – I trace how Festival organisers drew upon the rhetoric and modes of behaviour of contemporary tourism in promoting a particular vision of the local community. By blurring the line between the fictional worlds of Britten’s village-themed operas and the site of Aldeburgh, the Festival encouraged the visitors to fabricate the very kind of community that organisers claimed could already be found at Aldeburgh.

Britten‘s music is usually thought of as tonal, even if the term is sometimes qualified.’ Much of the drama of his operas (at least, up to and including A Midsummer Night's Dream, op. 64 (1960)) has been discussed in terms of ‘tonal action’, as have the structures of individual songs, song cycles and purely instrumental works. Yet his earliest published works are not tonal in the same way as later, more widely known ones. Not until the works of his American years (1939–42) do we begin to see the kind of tonal structure that enabled Peter Grimes, op. 33 (1945), to be conceived – structures like the highly focused tritonal opposition of Les illuminations, op. 18 (1939), or the E/C ambiguity (eventually resolved in favour of E) of the Hymn to St Cecilia, op. 27 (1942). Nevertheless Britten's first three works with opus numbers, written while he was a student at the Royal College of Music from 1930 to 1933 (the Sinfonietta, op. 1, completed in July 1932; the Phantasy Quartet, op. 2, completed in October 1932; and A Boy was Born, op. 3, completed in May 1933), are quite clearly diatonic in basis. This essay explores the ways in which this diatonicism is structured, and sketches the subsequent history of the main procedure involved.

Рассматриваются оркестровые интерлюдии из оперы «Питер Граймс» Б. Бриттена. Цель - на основе анализа интерлюдий выявить композиционные и драматургические принципы цикла. Методология работы определяется традициями музыкознания в области исследования, главным из которых является метод музыкального анализа. В результате сделан вывод о том, что Четыре морские интерлюдии можно рассматривать как единый цикл, близкий по форме программной симфонии, отражающей внутренний психологический конфликт главного героя оперы. Практическая ценность работы заключается в возможности использования результатов исследования в курсах учебных дисциплин: зарубежная история музыки, драматургия музыкального произведения, анализ музыкальных форм. This work examines the orchestral interludes from the opera "Peter Grimes" by B. Britten. The purpose of this article is to identify the compositional and dramatic principles of the cycle based on the analysis of interludes. The methodology of the work is determined by the traditions of musicology in the field of research, the main of which is the method of musical analysis. As a result, it is concluded that the Four Seas Interludes can be considered as a single cycle, similar in form to the program symphony, reflecting the internal psychological conflict of the main character of the opera. The practical value of the work lies in the possibility of using the results of the research in the courses of academic disciplines: foreign history of music, drama of a musical composition, analysis of musical forms.

When Addressing a text to be set a composer will, at the extremes, offer it violence or reverence, and a sharp-edged exchange was committed to print in the 1960's concerning the correct relation between parole and musica when sentence (or stanza) is made cadence. In his Conclusion to Denis Stevens's A History of Song, Michael Tippett stated that one of the attributes of the song-writer was the ability to destroy all the verbal music of the poetry he set and to substitute ‘the music of music’. Five years later, in his contribution to the Festschrift for Tippett's 60th birthday, Peter Pears made a spirited denial of this ‘Mantis-like’ proposition: the composer should court his text, designing a musical structure compliant to his purpose while according the words the care of the poet whose art they first were. Behind this genteel shadow-boxing lay a wider issue: whether there were definable canons for the setting of English text (as exemplified by Benjamin Britten, since it was against his vocal works that the felicities and inflations Pears discerned in Tippett's 1943 cantata Boyhood's End and 1951 song cycle The Heart's Assurance were implicitly being measured) and whether Tippett's practice flouted them.

Peter Grimes, la primera ópera del compositor inglés Benjamin Britten, fue reconocida desde su estreno en 1945 como una obra maestra, incorporándose de manera inmediata al circuito internacional. Con esta obra, la tradición operística moderna del Reino Unido resurge finalmente después de numerosos intentos. La Tesis que aquí se presenta nace de mi asombro ante el acierto del compositor en su primera incursión operística, hecho altamente infrecuente incluso en el caso de compositores eminentemente operísticos como fueron Mozart, Verdi o Puccini. De ahí que busque explicar en qué medida las obras instrumentales y vocales del compositor inglés ya anticipan al operista y cómo se fue preparando en su producción anterior para dar el salto al género lírico. Mi investigación examina en qué sentido la obra de Britten anterior a Peter Grimes resulta ser un laboratorio para el futuro compositor de ópera, al presentar notables rasgos dramático-escénicos. Con tal propósito propongo una explicación del concepto de dramatismo musical, antes de abordar el estudio de obras importantes de Britten de principios de los años 40, en particular la Sinfonia da Requiem (1941). Centro a continuación mi atención en el drama radiofónico The Rescue (1943), verdadero núcleo de la investigación abordada en la Tesis. Basada en un libreto de Edward Sackville-West y producida por la BBC, The Rescue constituye la última obra de envergadura antes de Grimes y, sin duda, la culminación de la dedicación de Britten a la música incidental. Además de investigar las circunstancias de su producción, así como su relación con la ópera de Monteverdi Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, pongo de manifiesto el carácter cuasi operístico de The Rescue, tanto a nivel textual como musical. En este sentido, The Rescue se puede interpretar como el último ensayo del compositor antes de acometer Peter Grimes. Si, como señalo, la dedicación incidental de Britten le permite familiarizarse con aspectos importantes del estilo operístico, también muestro cómo el dominio de los recursos técnicos y discursivos de la radio y del cine documental fueron asimismo incorporados de manera original en algunas de sus óperas más importantes. Por otra parte, he puesto especial empeño en resaltar la figura de Sackville-West, crítico y escritor, amigo y consejero de Britten a su vuelta a Inglaterra en 1942, cuya importancia no ha sido hasta ahora lo suficientemente valorada en la literatura britteniana. La consulta directa del autógrafo de The Rescue, conservado en los archivos de la Britten-Pears Foundation, me llevó a descubrir que importantes fragmentos de la obra no habían sido incluidos en la versión de concierto de de Souza (The Rescue of Penelope). En la Tesis se presentan por primera vez dichos fragmentos, así como una selección de la correspondencia hasta ahora inédita entre Britten y Sackville-West. Es la lectura de esta correspondencia, que arroja nueva luz sobre la relación entre ambos, la que me llevó a redescubrir Ithaque délivrée, la versión francesa de The Rescue, actualmente olvidada. Del conjunto de la presente investigación se desprende la imagen de un compositor que, a pesar de su virtuosismo técnico, sabe ponerse a sí mismo a prueba de manera progresiva antes de acometer la que se mantendrá como su ópera más popular y valorada.
Peter Grimes, the first opera of the English composer Benjamin Britten, was recognised as a masterpiece from its release in 1945, and immediately joined the international circuit. With this work, the modern opera tradition of the United Kingdom finally re-emerged after several attempts. The thesis here presented arose from my astonishment at the composer’s mastery and talent at his first opera undertaking, a rare event, even in the case of major opera composers such as Mozart, Verdi or Puccini. My aim is thus to explain to what extent Benjamin Britten’s instrumental and vocal works anticipate the opera composer and how his previous production prepared him for the jump into the lyric genre. My research examines in what sense Britten’s work previous to Peter Grimes proves to be a laboratory for the future opera composer, given its significant dramatic-scenic characteristics. For this purpose, I develop an explanation of the concept of musical dramatic quality, before studying Britten’s important works of the 40s, especially the Sinfonia da Requiem (1941). I then focus on the radio drama The Rescue (1943), the true core of the research here presented. Based on a libretto by Edward Sackville-West and produced by the BBC, The Rescue is considered to be his last major work before Grimes and undoubtedly represents the culmination of Britten’s dedication to incidental music. After researching its production circumstances, as well as its relationship to Monteverdi’s opera Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, I highlight the quasi-operatic character of The Rescue, on both textual and musical levels. In this sense, The Rescue can be considered the composer’s last rehearsal before undertaking Peter Grimes. While it is true that Britten’s dedication to incidental music enables him to become familiar with important aspects of the operatic style, I also show how his mastery of technical and discursive resources of the radio and documentary cinema were also incorporated in an original manner in some of his most important operas. Particular emphasis is given to the figure of the critic and writer Sackville-West, Britten’s friend and counsellor at his return to England in 1942, and whose importance has not been sufficiently valued in Britten’s studies. The direct consultation of The Rescue autograph, preserved in the archives of the Britten-Pears Foundation, led me to discover important fragments of the radio drama that were not included in the concert version of de Souza (The Rescue of Penelope). In The Thesis, these fragments are presented for the first time, together with a selection of the so far unpublished correspondence between Britten and Sackville-West. This correspondence sheds new light on the relationship between both men, and it enabled me to discover Itaque délivrée, the French version of The Rescue, now forgotten. Throughout the research here presented, what stands out is the image of a composer who, despite his technical virtuosity, knows how to set himself to the test before undertaking what will remain as his most popular and appreciated opera.

Throughout his career, Benjamin Britten was actively involved in the composition of music for television and film, for projects ranging from documentary soundtracks for the General Post Office Film Unit (1935-36) to television adaptations of his operas. This thesis will examine the television production of Peter Grimes, which was shot under Britten’s supervision in 1969 at the Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh. The production has Peter Pears, Britten’s partner and collaborator, in the title role, a role that he also performed in the 1945 premiere of the opera. As in many of his operas, Peter Grimes encourages the audience to sympathetically identify with a character who is an outsider in society. Grimes, for example, is rejected by the people in the local village, yet is made to be a multi-dimensional character who the audience is encouraged to feel sympathy for. The thesis will examine how gesture is used in the production to create a sympathetic connection between Grimes and the audience. It will also pay particular attention to the use of camera techniques to enhance this connection through different shots including close-ups and framing the individual against the crowd. In addition, it examines how the gestures performed relate to and interact with the accompanying score. The gestures used by Grimes in three scenes of the opera will be examined in detail: the Prologue, Interlude IV, and Act III scene ii. This thesis will examine Britten’s perceptions of the character of Grimes, his involvement in the television production process, and his views on acting. Through looking at Pears’s copies of vocal scores, it will also explore his relationship with Grimes and how he approached gesture in his operatic roles.
Arts, Faculty of
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A definitive text of the libretto of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes is here presented. The process by which it was created is revealed in detail. All the extant versions are collated and significant differences between them displayed. For the first time the scenarios written by Britten and his partner Peter Pears and the first surviving draft versions of scenes by the librettist Montagu Slater are published in full. Additions to the draft and final libretto texts and revisions throughout this process by Slater, Britten, producer Eric Crozier and, in the final scene, poet Ronald Duncan, are clarified and a critique provided. Marked differences in stage directions between the libretto texts and music scores are shown and versions selected or created which offer the best indicative detail for performance practice. The edited text is similarly enriched by the inclusion of performance indicators from various sources added by Britten, Pears and the work's first conductor, Reginald Goodall. The edition is introduced by three 'Perspectives' sections which consider (1) Britten's relationship with Slater and working practice with librettists; (2) the relationship of the work to its original source, George Crabbe's poem The Borough, the difference in the portrait and treatment of the character Peter Grimes and the reasons for the difference; and (3) the particular contribution and features of Slater's writing. Thereafter follow an account of the rationale, principles and practice of the edition and introductions to every scene in which the use of source material, the evolution of the text, the plot development and performance issues of the scene, the presentation of characters and the set are delineated, the latter with reference to photographs of the original set hitherto unpublished.

Thesis (Master of Music)--University of Cincinnati, 2008.
Advisors: Dr. Bruce D. McClung PhD (Committee Chair), Dr. Mary Sue Morrow PhD (Committee Member), Kenneth R. Griffiths MM (Committee Member) Title from electronic thesis title page (viewed Oct. 4, 2008). Includes abstract. Keywords:Benjamin Britten; Ralph Vaughan Williams; Peter Grimes; The Pilgrim's Progress; Gloriana; Aesthetics; Reception; Reception History; English Opera; Twentieth-Century English Opera Includes bibliographical references.

This chapter explores representations of blackness in opera in relation to masculinity and morality. More specifically, it considers the changing codes of masculinity in leading male roles and how they are calibrated differently for white European characters and nonwhite characters with non-European ancestry. It also looks at the ways in which masculinity and heroism are brought together differently for black and non-black characters. In order to elucidate these issues, the chapter analyzes Giuseppe Verdi's Otello (1887), focusing on its references to getting the “chocolate” ready and the way Verdi dramatizes Otello's vicious murder of Desdemona. Four other operas written in the first half of the twentieth century, two of which feature white European title characters and the other two feature African American protagonists, are examined: Alban Berg's Wozzeck (1925), Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf (1927), George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935), and Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes (1945).

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, philosophical and ideological tenets. The book is thematically structured in five parts: Britten's relationships with Peter Pears, his close friends, mentors, and colleagues; musical life in Britain; his interactions with previous and contemporary generations of composers; his professional work with choreographers, librettists, stage designers, and directors; and his socio-cultural, religious, and political environment. The chapters shed light on the many opportunities and challenges of post-war British musical life that shaped Britten's creative output.

This chapter considers a number of ways in which musical composers have engaged with and assimilated Lawrence’s poetry (as well as some of his other works and, indeed, his life story), over a 100-year period. Foregrounding texts selected for musical setting, the chapter begins with an analysis of sound, silence, rhythm, repetition and movement in Lawrence’s verse. Subsequently, it explores the various strategies adopted by composers when setting these poems to music. Some create a song from a single poem; some compose song-cycles by combining poems from within a single collection, such as Birds, Beasts and Flowers. Others juxtapose poems from across a range of Lawrence’s verse-books – or combine Lawrence poems with those of other poets. This chapter explores the implications of such choices, offering analyses of musical compositions in which words and sounds have been creatively combined. Composers discussed include Peter Warlock, Benjamin Britten and Arnold Cooke, alongside a number of lesser-known contemporary figures, whose works (spanning a number of genres) bring Lawrence to a new generation.