Book description
Published to mark the beginning of the Britten centenary year in
2013, Paul Kildea's Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth
Century is the definitive biography of Britain's greatest modern composer.
In the eyes of many, Benjamin Britten was our finest composer since
Purcell (a figure who often inspired him) three hundred years earlier.
He broke decisively with the romantic, nationalist school of figures
such as Parry, Elgar and Vaughan Williams and recreated English music
in a fresh, modern, European form. With Peter Grimes (1945),
Billy Budd (1951) and The Turn of the Screw (1954), he
arguably composed the last operas - from any composer in any country -
which have entered both the popular consciousness and the musical
canon.
He did all this while carrying two disadvantages to worldly success
- his passionately held pacifism, which made him suspect to the
authorities during and immediately after the Second World War - and
his homosexuality, specifically his forty-year relationship with Peter
Pears, for whom many of his greatest operatic roles and vocal works
were created. The atmosphere and personalities of Aldeburgh in his
native Suffolk also form another wonderful dimension to the book.
Kildea shows clearly how Britten made this creative community, notably
with the foundation of the Aldeburgh Festival and the building of
Snape Maltings, but also how costly the determination that this
required was.
Above all, this book helps us understand the relationship of
Britten's music to his life, and takes us as far into his creative
process as we are ever likely to go. Kildea reads dozens of Britten's
works with enormous intelligence and sensitivity, in a way which those
without formal musical training can understand. It is one of the most
moving and enjoyable biographies of a creative artist of any kind to
have appeared for years.
Paul Kildea is a writer and conductor who has performed many of the
Britten works he writes about, in opera houses and concert halls from
Sydney to Hamburg. His previous books include Selling Britten
(2002) and (as editor) Britten on Music (2003). He was Head of
Music at the Aldeburgh Festival between 1999 and 2002 and subsequently
Artistic Director of the Wigmore Hall in London.
