With his Aspen award lecture (1964), Benjamin Britten expressed a unique commitment to community and place. This book revisits this seminal lecture, but then uses it as a starting point of reflection, inviting leading composers, producers and writers to consider the role of the composer in the community in Britain in the last fifty years. Colin Matthews, Jonathan Reekie and John Barber reflect on Britten's aspirations as a composer and the impact of his legacy, and Gillian Moore surveys the ideals of composers since the 1960s. Eugene Skeef and Tommy Pearson discuss the influence of the London Sinfonietta, while Katie Tearle reviews the tradition of community opera at Glyndebourne. Nigel Osborne and Judith Webster explore the role of music as therapy, and James Redwood, Amoret Abis, Sean Gregory and Douglas Mitchell look at music in the classroom and creative workshops. John Sloboda, Detta Danford and Natasha Zielazinski discuss collaboration in music-making and ways of facilitating exchanges between the composer and the audience, while Christopher Fox and Howard Skempton examine the role of modernism and the use of 'other', radical techniques to stimulate new dialogues between composer and community. Peter Wiegold and Amoret Abis interview Sir Harrison Birtwistle, John Woolrich and Phillip Cashian, and Wiegold discusses his formative experiences in encountering music-making in other cultures. All of these approaches to the role and identity of the composer throw a different light on how we address 'the composer and the community': the varied, sometimes contradictory, motivations of composers; the role of music in 'enhancing lives'; the concept of 'outreach' and the different ways this is pursued; and, finally, the meaning of 'community'. Underpinning each are genuine questions about the relationship of arts to society. This book will appeal not only to composers, performers and practitioners of contemporary music but to anyone interested in the changes in twentieth-century music practice, music in education, and the role of music and the arts in the wider community and society. PETER WIEGOLD is a composer, conductor and the director of Club In gales and the Institute of Composing. He is a Research Professor of Music at Brunel University, and also director of the 'Brunel Institute for Contemporary Middle-Eastern Music' (BICMEM). GHISLAINE KENYON is an author, freelance arts education consultant and curator.

Originally published in 1969. Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was thought that England, alone among the European countries, and unlike Scotland and Ireland where collections of ballads and songs had already been published as early as the eighteenth century, had no important native tradition of music. The founding of the (English) Folk-Song Society in 1898, however, and the pioneering work of such collectors as Lucy Broadwood, the Reverend S. Baring-Gould and, later, Cecil Sharp uncovered a still flourishing folk culture. Since then interest in this subject has grown steadily, and the bibliography of publications of actual folk-songs and ballads is now huge. Frank Howes sets out a general and scholarly introduction, first examining in detail the history and origins of folk music and going on to show the nature and vast amount of the material, enforcing his arguments with a wealth of examples from around the world. His discussion of the differences of national idiom leads on to a comparison of British folk music with that of other European countries and America, in which he pays due attention to the Celtic and Norse traditions. Separate sections on balladry, carols, street cries, broadsides, sea shanties, nursery rhymes and instruments illustrate both the variety of folk music and the extent to which it permeates our national heritage.

This collection of connected essays starts with an examination of the Welsh nation within the wider British entity, continues with an analysis of the Conservative response and concludes with the signature essay, 'Will Britain Survive Beyond 2020'?

Between 1946 and 1959, the most outspoken voice in British film music was that of the Austrian emigre Hans Keller. This work is a collection of writings on film music by the celebrated critic.

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.

Investigates cinematic qualities in opera and reveals why Benjamin Britten's operas lend themselves to TV and film interpretations. Benjamin Britten's 1954 opera The Turn of the Screw, based on Henry James's ghost story, has been described by many critics and commentators as cinematic. Along with Peter Grimes, The Turn of the Screw is one of the most frequently televised or filmed of Britten's operas. Some of these productions have used location footage and/or studio work, and others are based on theatrical settings. This book explores the notion of cinematic opera in the context of The Turn of the Screw and filmed opera in general, and questions what inherent cinematic qualities exist in the work which make it particularly conducive for screen interpretation, an aspect of Britten's compositional style which has rarely been examined in detail before. Contrary to the prevailing narrative around Britten's disdain for cinema and television, the composer engaged with film as both a cinemagoer and film music composer early in his career and these experiences informed his compositional and dramatic choices. Archival research reveals clues to the composer's adaptation process. By tracing the progress from Henry James's original novella to operatic stage and screen production, via the development of Myfanwy Piper's libretto and Britten's score, the journey of adaptation is discussed in detail. A key part of the book looks at the subsequent interpretation of the opera on screen. Case studies evaluate eight directors' interpretations of the opera ranging from 1959 up to the 2020s. Included is a special study of Peter Morley's 1959 ITV version, which had previously been thought lost. This reveals the roots of Britten's subsequent engagement with screen media, culminating in his television opera Owen Wingrave. The book also briefly explores the influence of cinema on stage productions of the opera which have not been filmed.

Britten in Context offers historical, social, cultural, queer, musical, and political context for one of the pivotal British composers of the twentieth century. Engaging essays from leading scholars in music, art, theory, performance, religion, and cultural and music history reward readers of all academic levels.