Britten's Musical Language

by Philip Rupprecht

Overview

Blending insights from linguistic and social theories of speech, ritual and narrative with music-analytic and historical criticism,Britten's Musical Language offers fresh perspectives on the composer's fusion of verbal and musical utterance in opera and song. It provides close interpretative studies of the major scores (including Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, War Requiem, Curlew River and Death in Venice) and explores Britten's ability to fashion complex and mysterious symbolic dramas from the interplay of texted song and wordless discourse of motives and themes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521031035
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/23/2006
Series:	Music in the Twentieth Century , #17
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Philip Rupprecht is Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He has written on Britten in a number of journals and is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (1999).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction: Britten's musical language; 2. Peter Grimes: the force of operatic utterance; 3. Motive and narrative in Billy Budd; 4. The Turn of the Screw: innocent performance; 5. Rituals: the War Requiem and Curlew River; 6. Subjectivity and perception in Death in Venice; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"A probing examination of selected works from Britten's massive oeuvre." —Opera Journal

From the Publisher